Richard Stallman on Software Patents

Yesterday I heard Richard Stallman, founder of the Free Software Foundation, speak at the University of Westminster. The topic of his talk was software patents and why they’re a bad idea. I had previously heard about certain software patents that caused some trouble, but it was very useful to hear Stallman spell out these problems.

He began by describing the term “intellectual property” as biased because it prejudges that software should be treated as property. Stallman argues that software is only information. The term also lumps together copyright and patent laws which are completely distinct laws. This lumping together of laws keeps people from seeing the real issues at hand. So the first step is to separate the issues. Copyright covers the authorship of an expression, is automatic and usually lasts for about 150 years. Patent covers ideas within that expression, is not automatic and usually lasts for about 20 years.

Stallman went on to discuss the main problem with software patents: when writing software, there’s practically no way to know what patents may interfere with the software you’re writing. (There is a way but it’s very difficult.) On top of this, patent language is written by lawyers for lawyers and is consequently difficult to understand.

When dealing with patents, the options that software authors have are few:

• Avoid the patent. This is often difficult if not impossible.
• License. This is really expensive unless you can cross-license, which is only practical for mega-corporations such as IBM and HP who have enough licenses to share.
• Overturn the patent. This can be difficult and cost millions of dollars.

It’s easy to see why Stallman calls software patents landmines for programmers.

An important question that I was pondering during his talk was one he eventually addressed himself. Other fields, such as engineering, deal with patents fine. Why should software be an exception? Stallman describes this as an unfair question because it treats software as the exception. A better question is this: should there be a different patent policy for different fields? Stallman thinks so. To explain his answer, he compared the fields of software design and pharmaceuticals. Pharmaceuticals, which can be patented, generally contain very specific chemicals which do a very specific thing. Software, on the other hand, is extremely complex and so it must contain many different ideas. Furthermore, software design is inherently easier than other fields because it’s based on mathematics. An example Stallman gave was an if-then loop. When a programmer creates an if-then loop, they know exactly how it’s going to work. They don’t have to worry about electric charges, heat or the mass of the computer the if-then loop is running on. This general ease of design makes it possible to include many different ideas, which in turn create more points of patent vulnerability.

Near the end of his talk, Stallman described the problem of software patents in terms of music. Imagine if any sequence of chords, particular melody or rhythm was patentable. Now imagine how Beethoven, The Beatles or Bob Dylon would be able to write music. This is analogous to the current situation in software design.

What Can Be Done About It?

From the flyer distributed at Richard Stallman’s talk:

The European Parliment voted in September for strong restrictions on software patents. But these are in danger of being set aside at a meeting of the EU’s Competitiveness Council of Ministers on 10 November. Senior patent officials from across Europe are already trying to “negotiate” a script for the meeting to follow.

If UK ministers cannot be convinced before 10 November, it is believed they will push strongly for the Council to adopt a November 2002 draft text, which is even worse than the infamous McCarthy report. The European Parliment’s rules for second reading make it very difficult for MPs to fix a bad text from the Council.

The FFII is calling on supporters to send letters and faxes to MPs as soon as possible, or even better to MPs in person, to tell the Government why software patents are a bad idea, and how particularly bad the November 2002 draft is.

More information is available at Foundation for a Free Information Infrastructure UK and softwarepatents.co.uk.