The Hindu : Karnataka / Bangalore News : Will patenting take the byte out of IT here?

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Wednesday, Sep 24, 2008
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Will patenting take the byte out of IT here?

Deepa Kurup

There has been little debate on patent laws and the software industry. Today is World Day Against Software Patents

IT software, services and outsourcing industry has been rooting for software patenting
Delhi Patent Office receives around 50 applications for software patents every month

— PHOTO K.K. MUSTAFAH

Expensive: The challenge for every programmer would be to verify each time, to see if any two lines of his code would infringe upon a patent.

BANGALORE: Picture this. Indian mathematicians came up with the concept of the “zero” — often touted as India’s greatest contribution to civilisation — and got a patent for it. By now they would have raked in inestimable amounts in royalty. Seems preposterous? Members of the Free Software community say that patenting every other algorithm would be somewhat in the same league.

While there has been substantial discussion on how patents will affect the pharmaceutical sector, there has been little debate about its implications on the software industry. To the layman, software patenting sounds like an abstract issue applicable to an even more abstract domain. However, with a growing software industry which is trying to spread its indigenous roots, the issue becomes an important one.

Traditionally, software comes under the Copyright Law (just like any literary work) and anyone who writes a program owns it. After Indian Parliament in 2005 scrapped an ordinance which declared “software in combination with hardware” patentable, the controversial and ambiguous clause — “software per se” — has now resurfaced in a recently formulated Patent Manual.

And how will the common man be affected by this proposed change in the patent manual? For example, when Global Patent Holdings patented usage of images on websites, a bunch of small and big companies had to cough up to $50 million each. And where does this cost reflect? “The consumer will find that products will get a lot more expensive. Take a DVD player which has about 2,000 patents (many of them software-related). Every time a local company makes a DVD player, they have to pay royalties and the costs will naturally be reflected on the sale price,” says Sunil Abraham of Centre for Internet and Society, a research and advocacy organisation.

Backdoor entry

The Free Software community feels that patents will make a backdoor entry, courtesy this manual and that ongoing public consultation (by the Patent Office) does not take their voices into account. Mr. Abraham says: “We feel that the powerful software lobbies around are pushing for this clause. If allowed, it will affect the basis of innovation, and will in turn affect the industry.” While the Bangalore consultation was “postponed indefinitely,” the Patent Office in its Delhi meeting said this issue called for an “exclusive meeting with the software industry.”

The powerful IT software, services and outsourcing industry has been rooting for software patenting. Under the guile of the seemingly innocuous clause in the Indian Patent Bill 2005, software companies and the MNC lobby is trying to carve out a slice for the specific “software embedded with hardware” industry saying that it will increase the value of indigenous home-grown software, pump up software exports and thereby rake in greater revenue.

However, the other side of the story is worth telling. Software, per se, is simply a set of instructions to carry out a certain process. Software experts put forth the argument that big corporations — with money, muscle and hired talent — will seek to impose patents along the software value chain, starting from source code to the recent demand for “embedded software.”

Sources in the Delhi Patent Office say that they receive around 50 applications for software patents every month. In the U.S. 25,000 patents are granted every year. In a software-driven world, blurring the lines between software and software “per se” could be risky. “Patenting is an expensive and tedious process. The challenge for every programmer would be to verify each time, to see if any two lines of his code would infringe upon a patent. In the U.S., a single verification can cost as much as $5,000. The fundamental issue is that if I arrive at anything independently, should I not use it only because someone had got it patented before me?” asks a senior official at Red Hat, an open source service provider.

A paper written by members of the Alternative Law Forum (ALF), the case against software patenting is presented as a very basic one. “Software evolves much faster than other industries, even with its own hardware industry. Microprocessors double in speed every two years. So, a patent that lasts up to 17 years (minimum period -15) is alarming. In this field, the idea underlying may remain the same but a product has to be replaced on an average of every two years,” it states. The paper also points out that in software “research costs are little because ideas are as abundant as air.”

Prashant Iyengar of ALF feels that patent laws will effectively curtail innovation, like it has done in the U.S. “Software, unlike other industries in India, is end-driven but is also on a “body shopping” model. Given that, a strong start-up company will be either be shut down or bought over if patent laws come in,” he explains.

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