Compcomm: Draft "IUCr Computing Commission's opinion on

[Lachlan Cranswick <l.m.d.cranswick@dl.ac.uk>]

Are there any comments, suggestions, etc on the following (especially
grammer, spelling and expression?) This is using text that Vincent and I
haved generated?  If nothing to the negative - I assume it would be OK to
get this on the IUCr Compcomm website?  And then pass it by the general
community for comment or discussion via the relevant newsgroups?


Draft "IUCr Computing Commission's opinion on Software Patents"

While it is important to provide legal protection to authors and
corporations developing scientific software, it is the opinion of the
IUCr Computing Commission that this protection should rely on existing
copyright and trademark laws. It is the further opinion of the IUCr
Computing Commission that software patents are a spurious fad and
against the spirit of the patent laws. It is common knowledge that
software patents go against the original spirit and letter of patent
law; and that many present software patents are either trivial, or
involve the patenting of prior art, and have only been passed due to
respective Patent Offices not being competent to analyse them. 

Patents passed on software methods are only effective in discouraging
and chilling the development of new scientific software. This can
prevent scientific advances from individuals, academic institutions and
small companies; as well as quench the spread of crystallographic
knowledge. Software Patents are therefore damaging to the entire
scientific community. The concluding opinion of the IUCr Computing
Commission is that there should be strong discouragement with respect to
Software Patents; and they should be viewed as an ethically illegitimate
and morally reprehensible practise.

############ Links & Information
 
**** European Patent Convention (Munich, 1973) : Article excluding 
explicitely patenting of "scientific theories and mathematical 
methods", and "programs for computers" :
http://www.european-patent-office.org/legal/epc/e/ar52.html

**** Sites providing information on software patents (why they should 
not be used)

http://swpat.ffii.org/patents/index.en.html (Foundation for a Free 
Information Infrastructure, European-based) 
Notably see the Horror Gallery:
http://swpat.ffii.org/patents/index.en.html

http://www.eurolinux.org/ the eurolinux petition, and information on how 
the software patent idea is progressing in Europe.

http://lpf.ai.mit.edu/  League for Programming Freedom

**** Known patents (pending or not) relevant for crystallography
- Marching cubes (3d display of mesh-electronic density almost always uses it)
- genetic algorithm for ab initio structure solution from powder 
  diffraction data.
- an indexation algorithm for powder patterns


**** Some infamous software patents
- Hyperlink patent from British Telecom. It has recently been rejected 
by a court, otherwise BT could sue every author of a web page...
- gif patent (if your software produces gifs, you're infringing on a 
patent) : http://burnallgifs.org/
- jpeg patent (you have to pay if you produce jpeg..):
http://www.wired.com/news/business/0,1367,53981,00.html
http://www.jpeg.org/newsrel1.html
-  the technique of using exclusive-or to write a cursor onto a screen 
(US patent 4,197,590),
etc...

http://www.bustpatents.com/ (not only software)

**** Just to show how surreal some patents (not software related) can 
be, the "sideways swinging on a swing" US patent #6,368,227:
http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PTO1&Sect2=HITOFF&d=PALL&p=1
&u=/netahtml/srchnum.htm&r=1&f=G&l=50&s1='6,368,227'.WKU.&OS=PN/6,368,227&RS
=PN/6,368,227


-----------------------
Lachlan M. D. Cranswick

Collaborative Computational Project No 14 (CCP14)
    for Single Crystal and Powder Diffraction
  Birkbeck University of London and Daresbury Synchrotron Laboratory 
Postal Address: CCP14 - School of Crystallography,
                Birkbeck College,
                Malet Street, Bloomsbury,
                WC1E 7HX, London,  UK
Tel: (+44) 020 7631 6850   Fax: (+44) 020 7631 6803
E-mail: l.m.d.cranswick@dl.ac.uk   Room: B091
WWW: http://www.ccp14.ac.uk/