 Press Release
NewsNow says software patents will damage the European economy
29th August 2003
The future of thousands of innovative IT
companies is under threat. Even NewsNow may not be entirely immune.
A proposed amendment to EU patent legislation will get its first reading
by the European Parliament on 1st Sept. While claiming to clarify patent
legislation, it will in fact open the door for wholesale patenting of
software in Europe.
Why should you be worried about this? Patents are designed to protect
companies' and individuals' investment in innovation, right? Wrong.
Software patents will favour large corporations with the financial and
legal might to register and enforce their own patents and fight off competing claims
for patents.
Experience in the US, where software has been patentable since the 80s,
shows that software patents stifle innovation, rather than supporting
it.
The courts there have been willing to enforce patents on algorithms
which are simple, and fundamental to much software which is in wide use. For
example, Microsoft was recently forced to pay out $520m to a company
with a single employee which claimed a patent on the concept of browser
plug-ins. Now other browser manufacturers may worry that they too are
infringing this patent. But Microsoft can afford $520m; smaller
companies would be unable to afford such sums, and might be put out of business.
It's worth noting that the draft of the EU legislation originated with
the US-based Business Software Alliance, which represents the interests
mainly of large corporations.
More worryingly, experts say that EU legislation will enable the
patenting of 'business methods'. Amazon has a patent on file at the EU patent
office similar to one it was granted in the US, which relates to its 'one
click' method of purchasing a product online. How innovative is such an idea,
and how much investment did it take to come up with it?
One of the key things about software development, as opposed to other
forms of scientific research and development, is that it doesn't
require a significant investment in expensive equipment or licenses. Buy a PC,
install Linux, and you can write software, and try to make money out of
it. NewsNow itself started out in 1997 with one box-shifter PC running
Linux.
This low startup cost makes for a highly competitive environment,
where a large player can easily be challenged by a small startup. This
competition is good for business: it creates opportunities for entrepreneurship; and
it's good for consumers: it creates choice and drives down costs.
If software patents become widespread, however, such competition will
cease. Large corporations will own patents which prevent others from
competing with them (and as they exploit their monopolies for profit,
they will be able to acquire more patents, reinforcing their
monopoly).
Software patents are bad for business, bad for consumers, and bad for
the Internet. Stop them now:
 Links
Contact Details
29th August 2003, NewsNow Publishing Limited, London England
Background Information
NewsNow is Europe's pioneering Internet news monitoring agency and supplier of tailored,
aggregated newsfeeds.
NewsNow's customers hail from the world's PR, marketing, communications
and web design departments of SME, national and
multinational businesses and charitable organisations.
These organisations use NewsNow to gather and monitor news relevant to their company,
clients, competitors, market industry and sector. Their news feeds may be delivered to their inbox, to
their intranet or extranet or alternatively to NewsNow's secure web archive interface.
NewsNow is one of only a few companies able to offer this kind
of online monitoring. Its customers include Exxon, Rolls-Royce, AMD and Sony Computer Entertainment.
NewsNow Key Points
- Searches over 37,000+ sources in real time
- Monitors news in over 141 countries and 20 languages
- Searches most leading international, national and regional newspapers;
consumer, trade and technical titles; government press pages; press
releases; blogs, webzines, newsletters and leading underground and
alternative publications
- Offers sophisticated positional and proximity matching - the ability to
specify keywords and phrases and the relationships between them
- No expertise necessary - professional staff take care of your changing
needs
- Sources added or removed on request
- 30 day news archive
- No per-article charges
- Fixed monthly fees
- Delivery by email alert, via secure web archive interface or to
any intranet or website
NewsNow History
NewsNow was founded in 1997. It began as a news aggregation website
(www.NewsNow.co.uk) that fast became the UK's leading news portal.
Today the portal features over 2300 topics and attracts
118 million page impressions monthly.
In 1998 NewsNow began delivering tailored news feeds to customers'
websites.
In 2001, the addition of a sophisticated custom
search engine capable of full-text search enabled NewsNow to deliver
high-quality but cost-effective tailored Internet news monitoring solutions to PR,
marketing and communications professionals of SME, national and
multinational businesses and charitable organisations.
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