Dave's Blog

Software patents seem to have dominated the news this week. First up the good news: the US patent office has overturned all 44 claims in Blackboard's patent, this is a prelimanary finding so open to apeal by Bb but still a very significant one.

Next up is a piece of news that is more confusing. The South African Minister of Public Services and Administration, Geraldine Fraser-Moleketi, gave a speech (video) at the opening of the Idlelo Conference in Dakar, Senegal.  In this she rightly savages thevery notion of software patents, highlightig that they pose a significant threat to software development in Africa. She hit the nail on the head with this line "there’s no reason to believe that society benefits from such monopolies being granted for computer programs [and inventions]” and corectly IMHO identified that the companies seeking patents where aiming to excleude compatition rather than foster inovation. 

Now if I agree so heartily with what she said why did I flag this as confusing? Well because it makes one wonder if our cabinet ministers are talking to each other. This is being directly contradicted by the "Intellectual Property Rights from Publicly Funded Research Bill", being promulgated by the Department of Science and Technology, This bill, which we are told has the backing of cabinet, will efectivly force all outputs of publicly funded reaearch to be patented. The latest draft in circulation (but not on the DST's website) includes software in its definition of research output. Now not only as the minister said this serves no public good it will prevent all public universities from taking part in open source projects, as it at the very least muddies the IPR in any code we may choose to contribute. Interestingly in this aspect the bill is in conflict with a number of the DST's policies