TAINT -- Justin Mason points to several interesting analyses concerning patents for software. Mason raises points that deserve to be calls to arms for the Irish software community. The underlying ideas about what the Treaty on Trade Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights must be correctly articulated to Enterprise Ireland and to the Minister for Enterprise.
Christian Beauprez, a UK-based consultant, makes very revealing conclusions.
TRIPS Article 10.1, 'Computer programs, whether in source or object code, shall be protected as literary works under the Berne Convention (1971).'WIPO Copyright Treaty Article 4, 'Computer programs are protected as literary works within the meaning of Article 2 of the Berne Convention. Such protection applies to computer programs, whatever may be the mode or form of their expression'.
This includes the execution or processing of a program, as demonstrated in the EEC software copyright Directive 1991, 'the permanent or temporary reproduction of a computer program by any means and in any form, in part or in whole. Insofar as loading, displaying, running, transmission or storage.'
They also stipulate that exceptions to exclusive rights of authors are to be limited to 'special cases' which do not conflict with a normal exploitation of the work and cannot be prejudicial to the author's rights. (e.g. the rights to sell,rent,broadcast,give away,translate, and generally enjoy).
...
Authors cannot own underlying ideas, but inventors can as part of their 'invention'. When the field of software (aka data processing) is opened up to 'inventors', they can block authors from exploiting their works on the grounds that they own the 'underlying ideas'. Therefore this is prejudicial to the rights of authors and illegal under all these Treaties.
Justin Mason -- "TRIPS, WIPO and the WTO doing the right thing on software patents?"
Christian Beauprez -- "Why are software patents illegal?"
Foundation for a Free Information Infrastructure -- "The TRIPS Treaty and software patents"
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