France To Launch a National Patent Troll 179
zoobab writes "France is creating a state sponsored patent fund, FranceBrevets, which primary focus will be to sponsor, acquire and license patents in the ICT (read software patents) sector. The patent fund is at the initiative of the minister of Research, Valérie Pécresse, the Ministry of Industry, Energy and digital economy, Eric Besson. The primary target of the fund is to collect licenses on those patents, which is already seen in France as the biggest patent troll of the country. France is also supporting the European Unitary Patent, which is seen by many at the final attempt to validate software patents in Europe."
Godwin (Score:4, Insightful)
You remember the Third Reich? Get rid of the racism and the sense of urgency, and you basically have the EU in a couple of decades. If I think of the number of freedoms I've lost both this and that side of the Pond since 1995, I wonder whether it's immoral to carry on being productive.
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Re:Godwin (Score:4, Informative)
Hah, I thought I might be the only one..
I remember reading Atlas Shrugged back in the '70s, thought it was right-wing crap (can I add, the next thing I read was the Illuminatus! trilogy)
Re-read it in the early '80s, still thought it was right-wing crap.
Re-read it in the '90s (mostly to give me a set of references to take the piss out of a Randiot I had the misfortune to deal with at the time), it worried me that some of it was starting to make sense. Still regarded is as mostly right-wing crap, but with valid points.
Re-read it a couple of times in the early '00s. Unfortunately, some parts of it almost exactly described my then current situation apropos my employer and my contributions to the 'system'. I'd hate to admit this, but it was a bit of a factor in me getting out of the field of employment I was engaged in.
The more I do look at the world, the more I think she was right, but with the wrong 'enemy' - she had an obvious bee in her bonnet regarding 'commies' which made her a bit blinkered.
Like the characters in the book, I'm currently employed doing something which (just) pays the bills, but it's not in my 'specialist' area of employment - that which I used to get paid silly money for doing (but which others were getting even sillier money for 'exploiting') which is now my 'hobby'. This wasn't a conscious decision, it was a couple of years later that I actually made the connection with the book.
(and no, I've not yet in the 30 odd years I've owned a copy of the book managed to get through Galt's diatribe...it's like all the damn songs in the LOTR trilogy, I promise myself the next time I'll really read through it, but t'other part of the brain which knows better always wins and I skip it/them - and I still maintain Atlas Shrugged is mostly right-wing crap.)
Re:Godwin (Score:5, Insightful)
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"Really, sometimes people are down, and you don't have to kick them. It won't destroy society if you help them out a bit."
Indeed. Some people thrive from help when the are down and go on to do good things with their lives. Also some people turn into leeches when they are helped. Most of the arguments regarding welfare states, unemployment benefits and the like comes down to disagreement about what the ratio between the two groups are and what ratio leads to a better society and is morally acceptable (*).
The
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It's not "charity" if it's someone else's money you're giving (through taxes) or if you do it because someone else tells you that if you don't then you're a "bad person" (or going to hell or whatever).
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No, she didn't - despite thousands of statists hoping you believe so.
Rand had publicly stated that opponents of statism should collect benefits as restoration of funds taken from them by force, there would be no reason for her to hide it. She would have been more likely to flaunt it.
"It is obvious, in such cases, that a man receives his own money which was taken from him by force, directly and specifically, without his consent, against his own choice. Those who advocated such laws are morally guilty, since
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You're right, of course. It just makes her a total cunt.
Someone being a total cunt is correlated with whatever that have to say not being worth listening to.
I will concede that Objectivism is wrong in its own right, without needing to look at how big of a hypocrite Ayn Rand actually was.
But seriously, if someone is making an argument from the basis of morality, that they are immoral, by their own code, does make whatever they're preaching suspect. You can argue that anything anyone said should be judged by
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"What does hypocrisy have to do with whether someone is right or wrong? Nothing."
What you fail to realise is that there are 6 billion people on this planet with something to say. Nobody has the time to listen to all these voices, and certainly nobody has the time to test whether they are right or wrong. In many cases "being right or wrong" is subjective anyway and certainly most political questions of our time belong to this category, if only due to lack of data.
What all this means is that you HAVE to make
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Exactly. It's perfectly possible that Ayn Rand was a welfare cheat and a hypocrite, yet her books could still be true.
But we can't be bothered getting into a deep philosophical debate with conniving personality cultists. They aren't interested in a logical debat, just justifying their deal leader. It's like trying to explain to Mac fanatics that Windows is more stable these days.
I could point out that all her books were painfully unrealistic. That not all left-wingers are talentless assholes (um, Einstein),
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Happiness is also a reward, after all people spend a lot of money on things to make them happy, if giving money to someone makes them happy that's a worthwhile investment.
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Right wing? When has individual liberty been "right wing" ? Seems like a liberal concept to me. John Locke anyone?
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I think you meant to post this comment over at www.dailymail.co.uk. They probably have some tips for recognizing Doodlebugs. Hint - listen for a buzzing noise.
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Whoosh!
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Would you care to elaborate which singel freedom you lost?
The freedom to settle everywhere in europe?
The freedom to transfer money into every country of europe?
The freedom to own land/houses everywhere in europe?
The freedom to work everywhere in europe?
The freedom to be a private owner (share holder) of a company everywhere in europe?
Comparing the EU with the Third Reich is imho a hugh insult to the survivors of the Third Reich.
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Well said, the GP is a fucking idiot blaming Europe for these things, when the problems stem from national governments.
Look at BT's spying on it's customers with Phorm, the British government white-washed it and it had to be the EU that stepped in and told them it wasn't acceptable.
Look at any number of human rights cases where the ECHR has done the right thing where national governments wouldn't.
Look at all the pro-consumer stuff like limiting mobile telco roaming profits which were rediculously high and g
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Well, to be honest Sarkozy only behaves like any US president does, after all he has similar power and also similar limits. As a person he likes to make grand gestures and to talk big, but I doubt he is truly a danger for anyone. ;D) it is really astonishing how deep he let Italy sink in the public opinion of the rest of
OTOH Berlusconi is certainly the most corrupt politician in Europe since Giulio Andreotti. Considering that he is a "North Italian" and the Mafia is stemming from the south (well, simplified
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You're listing the freedoms that the Reich wanted to grant the ethnically favoured across Europe, yes?
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No, I'm listing the freedoms we have in europe as I don't get why our parent is comparing europe with the third reich.
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Things the Nazis did do: kill their political opponents, destroy their democratic system, try to conquer the world. These are (besides the racism and genocide) the reasons we don't like the Nazis. This is why Godwin's law exists: because com
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No. I was not comparing the Nazis, I was comparing the whole Reich, economy and all. Politically, the EU is very stable, democratic, so we don't need to examine what would happen if a multiparty coalition decided to remove their opponents, as it won't happen anyway. Even if it did, it would just recreate the problem all over again, due to the mass of freed-up voters being available for the coalition parties to grab, causing it to fracture.
This article is more concerned with economy and sociology: patent sui
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Politically, the EU is very stable, democratic,
No, it's really not. There's a huge dividing rift between the richer and poorer countries. Furthermore, the weakness of its democratic structures (too many powerful people are appointed, not elected) makes it vulnerable to corruption.
The biggest reason beside racism and the Holocaust for not liking the Nazis is that the US/SU alliance won the war
The Nazis didn't treat th
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Politically, the EU is very stable, democratic,
No, it's really not. There's a huge dividing rift between the richer and poorer countries. Furthermore, the weakness of its democratic structures (too many powerful people are appointed, not elected) makes it vulnerable to corruption.
Perhaps the parent meant that individual EU countries are in general stable and democratic.
The biggest reason beside racism and the Holocaust for not liking the Nazis is that the US/SU alliance won the war
The Nazis didn't treat the countries they conquered well at all. They would have been remembered poorly even if the US had stayed out of it, as happens to oppressive conquerors.
True enough, and on the Allies' side, this is largely true of the Soviet Union in the same period. At the end of WWII, the Soviet Union was widely disliked in Central (and parts of Eastern) Europe, but being on the winning side, it still got to bring many of those countries into its sphere of influence. Many residents were *not* happy about that.
Why did the US remain in the war 'till the bitter end?
Uh, because we wanted to win? What, did you expect us to turn around right after the D-day victories and say, "well that was a waste of time?" Staying in the war to the bitter end was really a more normal thing to do......
Unless you can put your ideas into other terms, you truly are not worth listening to.
Er, maybe that last bit was not strictly necessary.
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Furthermore, the weakness of its democratic structures (too many powerful people are appointed, not elected) makes it vulnerable to corruption
Since we're already Godwin'd, I'd like to point out that it was the fact that powerful people were elected that made Germany so vulnerable to corruption. This is one of the big problems that I see with a lot of countries now: democracy has become a goal in its own right, rather than a tool for protecting freedom.
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Uh, because we wanted to win? What, did you expect us to turn around right after the D-day victories and say, "well that was a waste of time?" Staying in the war to the bitter end was really a more normal thing to do......
Also since the western Allies and the Soviet Union were both part of the Allies that meant the Soviets wouldn't get to conquer the entirety of Europe under the pretext of defeating the Nazis, they stopped where both Allied forces met. Considering how badly they ran the GDR I think western
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The U.S. remained in the war because the U.S.'s war with Germany was a consequence of its war with Japan. You're incorrect about the propaganda machine's depiction of Nazis as monsters. The Nazis were depicted as we depict Star Wars' stormtroopers, yes -- as formidable, highly organized, threatening foes, but no
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Presumably (with some urging from Churchill) to prevent the Soviets from carrying on across the rest of Europe, which would probably give the Allies an even bigger threat to face in the future.
The Soviets would then have all Europes resources, industry and Nazi scientists. Stalin was huge supporter of equal rights when it came to sending people off to the gulag. And the Soviets had a preexisting ideological reason to pick a fight with the US/UK that Hitl
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That will be great until some scumbag a few rungs up the ladder from you decides he's going to fuck your wife and if you both don't like it he will make your lives a living hell with all the "subversive" things he has on you. You aren't actually subversive at all, but with tens of thousands of items of information about you he will find some angle to paint you as a problem that needs correcting.
Good luck trading freedom for the illusion of security.
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Those who would give up essential freedoms in exchange for security, deserve neither.
It's only a near-quote, but you get the idea.
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Those who would give up essential freedoms in exchange for security, deserve neither.
It's only a near-quote, but you get the idea.
And don't for get attribution: Thomas Jefferson.
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Yeah, I've sometimes suspected that horrid Nazi regime aspects such as the virulent anti-Semitism make Hitler's better ideas look bad via guilt-by-association
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The problem is that the government is just as self-serving as every other human so a power imbalance like that will get exploited.
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Other people's? Sure thing, why not. They're not me, and to be honest, I agree with the "If you've done nothing wrong, you've got nothing to hide"-philosophy, to a certain degree. Although if they started wiretapping my cell without a crime being committed, or opening my mail, I'd probably be outraged too. Otherwise, I don't really care about being monitored by CCTV, since I'm not really paranoid about the government being after me.
And before you (or anyone else) start reciting the quote "First the came for
Re:Godwin (Score:4, Informative)
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To play the Devil's Advocate again, the PATRIOT act made no real difference due to there being no further real attempts, just some half-assed pokes (Shoe Bomber, Underwear Bomber) to keep the US frightened. It's possible that in case of a real, well-prepared attack, the Act would have had an opportunity to shine, but let's hope we never find that out.
As for British CCTV, it might just be a matter of implementation, though to be honest, I don't know about the system, so I can't judge it either.
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I'd much rather risk a "terrorist" attack than give up any of my privacy or freedoms. Besides, spying on random people suspected of being terrorists is hardly a good method of apprehending so-called terrorists.
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I think making the cockpit doors lock in-flight, and having pilots carry sidearms (though are they trained in their use? Probably, but I'm not sure...) makes for rather good defense against most of the damage, even if it's not from the PATRIOT Act. That, and the checkpoints make for too much hassle to blow up a plane, but have shifted the prime target down to the ground, to the checkpoints themselves, where a lot of people queue up.
The SNR could probably be fixed if the "Enhanced Intelligence" really meant
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Racial profiling (non-jews and especially arabs are singled for more thorough examination). This is considered perfectly normal in Israel, but is not legal in US or EU.
Probably not terribly effective either. As far as I can tell the only reason it works at all is not because the Jewish population doesn't contain terrorists but because that they're reasonably sure Israeli Jews will only attack politically acceptable targets. Even that only works due to an atmosphere of imminent danger fed by the media that aims lone-wolf nutters safely at Arabs and Arab-sympathisers.
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Implementation, the man says.
Hey, have you noticed that men are never perfect? (Don't get me started on women!) And, lacking perfection, men are corruptible. So - it doesn't matter much how you implement some whacko dystopian surveillance system - it's gonna suck.
Oh, it might make timid old ladies feel good, and collectivists who wouldn't have a mind unless they had freinds around to tell them what to think. But, there are still millions of us individualists who hate you bastards that want to tell us ho
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There's only a single point in your post that can be reasonably refuted (the rest is a covert ad hominem attack):
Even if it happens to be the tyranny of the majority.
Here in Europe, we call that democracy.
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Here in Europe, we call that democracy.
Tyranny of the majority means letting the will of the majority rule even in cases where it causes real harm to the minority. This is usually seen in civil rights situations. Jim Crow [wikipedia.org] type laws tend to pop up in places with a racial imbalance, and similar laws concerning religious practice are seen in places where one religion is dominant.
As an example, lynching was all but legal in the U.S. in some places, and was extensively used in the southern states both before a
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Though I'm not a US resident, I too hope the silly "security theater" will drop the curtains soon. Like I've said in so many posts, it just opened up new attack venues for the terrorists to take advantage of, and barely closed the old ones. Now that the al Qaeda is pretty much disorganized after Osama's death, they can really afford easing up a bit. It's not like attacks were frequent enough 2002-2010 to keep all these laws in force, "deterrence-effect" or not...
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So, you're saying, you want people to do illegal things.
Umm, how does what I said lead to people doing illegal things? If anything, a more visible police force and the knowledge that their crimes will be recorded and detected, their moves can be traced to bring them to justice will serve as a deterrent to crime. 1984-ish it may be, but it would at least make for a more peaceful society.
As for crying the moment someone inflicts harm on me, the moment my life is threatened, under Hungarian law, I am allowed to use proportionate force to defend myself, even disprop
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Multiple cultures almost inevitably lead to tension
You mean the multiculturalism in failed states like Australia, New Zealand, Singapore, etc?
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Um, do you know what a failed state is? It's when a state does not have monopoly over the use of force within its borders. Think Somalia, Niger, Mexico is fast approaching with the Drug Wars in the area; according to a broader definition (mostly supported by the US Foreign Office and Fund For Peace), even North Korea and Iran, which have pretty firm grasps on their monopoly of violence...
This latter definition, however, does not reflect the traditional International Relations one, which is strictly the loss
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Is that the same Hungary where violent racism against the Roma is still rampant?
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And confined to a small segment of the population. In much the same way violent racism against the Arabs is rampant in France.
We had a resurgence recently that made the news (Gyöngyöspata, if the place name rings a bell), but even that was just a bunch of extreme right-wingers loudmouthing.
But what does that have to do with self-defense?
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You're doing illegal things yourself, dumbass. Most likely before you got out of bed this morning. So did I, and everybody who's reading this thread.
Seriously. Depending on where you live, do you have any idea just how many local, state or province, and Federal or EU laws you're subject to?
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"So, you're saying, you want people to do illegal things"
No, he isn't saying this. I may add that a police state, History shows, only make sense for the one controlling the police, not the citizens.
And then again, if you want surveillance to track criminals after the fact you should think twice about it: by your (probable) argument, death penalty should be the biggest deterrent to criminality (since it's about the worst thing you can do to the criminal after the fact, which is the vector expolited by track
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Noted. Thanks for the correction, German is not my strong point...
Finality (Score:5, Insightful)
France is also supporting the European Unitary Patent, which is seen by many at the final attempt to validate software patents in Europe.
Correction : this will only be the final attempt if it succeeds. Otherwise, stand by for many more.
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Ironically, the French patent establishment largely launched the notion of 'intellectual property' [digitalmajority.org] in the late 18th century.
This has been a long, long fight between the patent lobby and the rest of society. The sad thing is no-one really represents society, today, except civil society groups. Government has long become a tool for big business to get laws it thinks it needs, and the big software business (often, US firms like MSFT) still believes (wrongly) that it needs software patents.
Patents will be the next 'bubble'. (Score:4, Interesting)
Easy to create in the thousands, being nothing more than a sheet of paper and can be sold for billions.
France is getting onboard early to dampen austerity measures from the last bubble.
Shrug? (Score:4, Insightful)
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Well, given that we (in the US) currently have a government that thinks "Atlas Shrugged" is a great story about how to run a railroad
We should make it a test for anyone standing for office - if you think that Atlas Shrugged is great then you're banned.
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Well, given that we (in the US) currently have a government that thinks "Atlas Shrugged" is a great story about how to run a railroad, I suppose it will be a while before stuff like this gets sorted out. And it probably won't be pleasant.
Ah yes, that train story about how running a red signal light is perfectly safe [tvtropes.org].
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As to 1: it is raising a tax on you by patent licensing. Moneywise it is the same thing, the difference is that since it is a private company, you have no vote on the matter.
As to 2: the French gov. sponsors a shitload of research, orders of magnitude beyond what IV will ever be able to do.
Also, if th
Welcome to 1984 (Score:5, Interesting)
Animal farm wants their president back. As a French national this makes me question my nationality. Between three strikes patents and this I wonder whether France truly got rid of the Nazis? Sad thing is there are so many other 'first world' nations that are also following this trend of returning to medevial times.
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Between three strikes patents and this I wonder whether France truly got rid of the Nazis?
Holy sense of proportion... I don't think anyone's biggest complaint about the Nazis was their attitude towards intellectual property.
Re:Welcome to 1984 (Score:5, Insightful)
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The Nazis were a mixture of tyrants and the mob, their approach to intellectual property was to subject your company to Gleichschaltung (intimidate, arrest or assassinate its leaders and replace them with peons of the party).
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The attitude towards imaginary property isn't the biggest complaint about the French government either.
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For goodness sake, you have a seven digit ID here - stop being so insightful.
You should be writing up bollocks under the subject line of "Welcome to 1984" or something.
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Nazism was a bus that some people got on and rode for all it was worth. Several interests in this country including William Davis (who was nailed to the wall for it) and Prescott Bush (who was permitted to keep a million dollars and use it to found an empire that culminated in the placement of a total idiot in the white house... so far) and let us not forget IBM made awfully big piles of money off ol' Adolf's attempt to exterminate every Jew but himself. Hell, a relative of mine watched a shot-down Zero sin
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You're not alone. Over here, we have SWAT team raids against people for selling raw milk.
If you ever felt you 'missed out' not living in the dark ages, I think you'll be getting your opportunity real soon now.
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Religion is irrational. There's a reason we are all afraid of stupid govt monkeys enforcing teaching of creationism in school.
Besides, the law against hiding faces wasn't based on the Bible, it was based on the fact that they're impossible to identify when hidden. France is pretty secular and we atheists don't consider Religion a valid reason for concealing yourself. Concealing your face also helps with crime as nobody can tell who you are, that's a good enough reason to ban it.
Don't politicians learn? (Score:5, Insightful)
The whole world witnesses the stagnation to software development caused by the incessant court battles about software patents in the USofA and then they want a similar system!
But then most of them are probably lawyers by trade so they see opportunities...
Lets hope other nations like the Germans can stop this nonsense taking hold in EU legislation.
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I think it's more an issue of the deepness of pockets than the size of stones.
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That may be one of the more depressing things I've read on the internet.
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Also the German economy is heavily based around small and medium sized businesses, software patents would be able to cripple that and wreck the country's economy.
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You have to ask if you have learned?
Why should the primary goal of a society be innovation?
I don't ask that sarcastically. Seriously... you speak of stagnation in software development as though that is the end of the argument.
For politicians and arguably for most of the population... things like jobs, security, power, wages... matter a whole lot more.
Looking at society, lawyers provide much more job security and long term employment than software developers. Expect more strangling pieces of legislation th
Software patents ? (Score:3)
See for instance here [www.inpi.fr].
Innovation Expropriation (Score:2)
The west has run out ideas... (Score:2)
This whole Patent and Intellectual Property craziness is because the politicians run out of ideas how to increase employment and Gross National Product.
They see that they lost the battle of keeping manufacturing and other jobs into their countries, slowly all the money creeps toward the BRIC countries.
What the politicians will be left with is the doom scenario that is unfolding in the Arabic countries round the Mediterranean and the creep of that scenario to the weak European economies round that same Medit
Not as bad as it sounds (Score:5, Interesting)
Of course on Slashdot patents=bad ; and of course as well no one is going to read the Fine Article, particularly if it is in french. The google "translation" and the various interpretations in english people have put out are not helping. Nowhere in the article is it written that this institution will massively collect stupid patents for little money and sue companies like Microsoft.
First you have to admit that patents have at least on principle some validity. Someone has an idea for a commercial new product, describes it in a patent and get some limited protection. It is totally unfair of large company to read such patents and implement the idea at a lower cost without paying licenses.
The idea here is to allow small-to-medium companies to benefit from patents as well. While a small company can certainly file for patent, they do not have the resources to defend them in court or otherwise, so basically they are more or less moot, except as bargaining chips for acquisition. The French government puts out a lot of money (think NSF-like grants but also industrialization grants) and they are not seeing as many industrial success as hoped. One reason, they reason, is that small companies cannot defend their ideas against larger companies, both in Europe and overseas. Other nations have government-based patent protection. Do you think the CSIRO patents for 802.11a/g [engadget.com] were trolling?
So this institution will help small-to-medium French companies defend their portfolio. The initial idea is no to collect patents but to propose services. Indeed they will put together defensible cases by polling patents in some cases, but the stated aim is to get licenses income for the companies, not for this new institution by itself. This is not the same as trolling I think.
Essentially the French government doesn't want to see its industrialization monies get wasted too much. What's bad about this ?
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"First you have to admit that patents have at least on principle some validity. Someone has an idea for a commercial new product, describes it in a patent and get some limited protection. It is totally unfair of large company to read such patents and implement the idea at a lower cost without paying licenses."
No that is not how patents are working. With patents (not the BS business or software patents) you have a working machine, not just an idea. I can come up with thousands of ideas every day, should I be
...into Space? (Score:2)
My excitement dwindled after the title.
It's not a "Patent Troll" (Score:2)
It's a "Patent Tgoll"
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That just sounds narrow minded. There are many countries doing crazy bullshit. ;)
This bullshit is limited to their own borders and they haven't yet created a report on how badly Canada is doing
The problem in France is they still believe what your parents did matters when you are trying to position yourself in society. The revolution only got rid of the king, since the rest essentially stayed the same.
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Governments continue to back the most restrictive interpretations of intellectual property they can.
This is the King's land.
It is illegal to hunt on the King's land.
Hmm... we've just come full circle.
Defining "intellectual" and "property" (Score:2)
intellectual property
What?
"Intellectual" refers to works of authorship or inventions; "property" means exclusive rights. Or are you referring to the "Seductive Mirage" article [gnu.org]?
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Hah, at the Battle of the Herrings we managed to beat them using a defensive structure made from fish wagons.
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The EPO and some of the national POs have a long and dirty history of pretending - for political reasons - that that is the case. I'm horrified if the lie is being repeated in an educational setting. I suggest you contact the French branch of the FFII for clarification, but with a little patience you can quite easily check for yourself just how brazen a lie it is: http://worldwide.espa [espacenet.com]
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"Someone please explain to me how the Unitary patent is a push towards software patents"
Thats very simple, take the German case law and make it the default for the whole of Europe.
"why software patents are a bad thing"
Because it is insane to ask authors to check zillion of claims before being able to write a piece of code.
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I don't know anything about the Unitary patent, so I won't comment on that.
Software patents are bad because they make it all but impossible for small companies or individuals to legally make software. IBM has the legal resources to research what patents a particular product may violate, but a guy who writes a script to create M3U playlists doesn't. Look at all the patent cases the smartphone companies are dealing with - they have a team of lawyers and can't avoid violating patents.
Bear in mind that patent
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There are approximately 16 patents per $100 million spent in Australian publicly funded Research Institutions http://bit.ly/jROW2M [bit.ly]. Other nations are not radically different. Therefore, France's concept may give a better return on investment whilst stimulating innovation. The danger is if they act as a Troll to intimidate other nations?
Actually, they can use this as a competitive advantage by favoring French or favored companies in licensing terms. They could give them generous (read cheap) licenses while charging others higher fees; thereby giving some companies an economic advantage.
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"It's not linked to software patents"
Of course it is linked, do you really believe that they wont file any software patent in the field of "Information and Communication Technologies":
http://www.agglotv.com/?p=15499
"Le domaine d’intervention prioritaire du fonds sera dans un premier temps les nouvelles technologies de l’information et de la communication"
Maybe they will stick themselves to resistors and hardware, but it is obvious that 95% of patents in "ICT" are now software.