Software patents coming to NZ

Further to my post last month, it appears the NZ government has done a u-turn on software patents and has decided, in the face of plenty of evidence to the contrary, we need them after all. What I found most surprising is the relative speed with which MP Simon Power did his flip flop. Going against a long and considered select committee process, Power was swayed by a guy who appears to be happy to admit that he doesn't know much about SW patents, and that, in fact, he is "not well informed on the software patents issue - he had his PA prepare his briefing on it."

Software patents

One of the biggest threats to free and open source software at the moment is the existence of software patents. News came out recently that not only is Apple suing HTC over its smartphones, but Steve Jobs also has his eyes on the brilliant open source video format Ogg Theora. Essentially what companies like Apple want is for everyone in the computing world to use the product they developed and to pay them a royalty for the privilege of using them. Clearly community-owned assets like open source software gets in the way of this kind of monopoly. Software patents are anti-competitive and unethical for a number of reasons, including:

• They are designed to protect an individual's or an individual company's 'intellectual property'. It's not designed to protect public ownership of things.
• They are designed to protect incumbents. Companies with good lawyers and deep pockets are collecting patents on just about everything to do with computing at the moment. If young, innovative companies want to make any progress in this kind of market, they have to sell their soul to incumbents before they begin.
• They make lawyers wealthy at the expense of entrepreneurs.
  

...and if a company like Microsoft can patent something like the double click, we might as well all get out of computing before we all get sued.