From league@prep.ai.mit.edu Sun Jun 30 19:18:22 1991
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Subject: LPF June Mailing part 1 of 2


\input texinfo.tex   @c-*-texinfo-*-

@center @titlefont{June Mailing to League Members}

@heading Our First Legislative Contacts

Early in April, League members Hal Abelson, Stan Kugell, Paul Camacho
and Richard Stallman met with Congressman Barney Frank of Massachusetts,
who is one of the most respected House members and also on the 
Intellectual Property Subcommittee.  He understood right away what we
had to tell him about software patents.

We have also met with staff at Senator Kerry's office.

Our ability to do this was helped greatly by Paul Camacho's political
contacts.  He is a political scientist at the University of
Massachusetts, and already knows quite a few of the staff of the
elected representatives in our area.

However, you can probably also arrange to meet with your Congressman,
or at least with their staff.  This is a very important thing to do.
If you suggest that their staff get in touch with the Special Counsel
for the House Subcommittee on Intellectual Property, they will be able
to learn from him how widespread the concern is about these issues.
And then they may want to talk more with you.

We chose the group of people to meet Congressman Frank so that it
contained a professor and an entrepreneur.  This is probably a good
thing to do if you want to have credibility when you meet your
Congressman.

@heading RSA Inc.@: Shuts Down Public-Key Mail Encryption

Programmers who haven't grasped the full scope of the harm done by
software patents sometimes offer the RSA patent as an example of a
software patent that ought to exist.  What they mean is that RSA
encryption is not obvious, the way backing store is obvious, or
natural order recalc.  And that is something we can't deny.  But this
does not imply that the patent granted for it is free of abuses, or
that issuing a patent was good policy.

Perhaps the facts in this article will help dispatch the RSA example
as an argument in favor of software patents.

Public key encryption was developed in the 1970s by professors at MIT
and Stanford.  These schools gave an exclusive license to a company,
called RSA Inc.@:@footnote{Since cosmetically renamed to Public Key
Partners.  I use their former name because it seems more appropriate
to their nature.}, which has done its level best to prevent the most
obvious and useful application of public key encryption: the delivery
of encrypted mail on the Internet and Usenet.

Widespread use of encrypted mail depends on the universal availability
of the software.  There have been several attempts to provide free
software to the network so that everyone would have it.  RSA Inc.@: has
squashed every one.

The RSA patent was obtained for an algorithm called RSA after the
names of the professors that developed it.  This May, a new public
domain mail encryption program was released.  It used a different
algorithm, called the Rabin algorithm.  (The `R' in RSA does not stand
for Rabin.)  RSA Inc.@: claims their patent covers this algorithm,
too.

In fact, they claim their monopoly extends to any algorithm that
performs two or more exponentiations and combines the results.  This
is a very broad class of algorithms.  (The president of RSA likes to
boast of this broadness as if it were a measure of his merit.)

This illustrates the subtle deception behind statements made by the US
Patent and Trademark Office that they do not grant patents on
algorithms.  It is true that no patent covers a single algorithm; this
is because a patent monopolizes a class of many related algorithms.

While you might naively think that prohibiting a broad class of 
algorithms is even worse than prohibiting one, the Patent Office
doesn't think so.  By careful choice of words, they can deny the
existence of algorithm patents, and give the impression that algorithms
are not being prohibited by patents.  For example:

@quotation
First, many assumed that we would grant a patent on a computer program
or a mathematical algorithm.  As we have stated, we will issue patents
on computer processes@dots{}, not on programs or mathematical algorithms.
@end quotation

@noindent
(This comes from testimony of Jeffrey Samuels, acting commissioner of
patents and trademarks, in the house subcommittee on intellectual
property.)

This case also shows how the patent system can do great harm while
doing absolutely no good.  The algorithms concerned were developed by
professors who inevitably would have published them, patent system or
no.  There was not even a possibility that society would benefit by
issuing this patent.

Another interesting aspect of this case is that several MIT professors
now receive government funding to do research which cannot be used
without infringing the RSA patent.  The effect is to provide a
government subsidy for RSA, Inc.@:, under the guise of research done for
the public good.

At the podium, the representatives of RSA, Inc.@: pretend to be doing
the public a service.  They claim that use of public key encryption
would be impossible without their help---that users must be carefully
taught how to use it.  Their recent actions reveal that their help is
not necessary---and also their true motives.

@heading Please Write to the US Patent Office

Along with this mailing, you will receive a copy of a request for
public comment from the US Patent Office.  Please write a letter to
the Patent Office in response.  The address is in the request.

Also send copies to the House and Senate intellectual property
subcommittees---they have got piles of mail about this issue, and it
is good to keep up the momentum.

@display
House Subcommittee on Intellectual Property
2137 Rayburn Bldg
Washington, DC 20515
@end display

@display
Senate Subcommittee on Patents, Trademarks and Copyrights
United States Senate
Washington, DC 20510
@end display

You will probably find parts of the request for comment obscure.
Probably anyone except a patent lawyer would.  Don't let it stop you
>from responding---answer the questions that make sense.

The advisory committee which has asked for these comments consists of
business executives, lawyers, plus a miscellaneous handful: a
university president, one person from a small business, and the
president of the association of university technology managers.  (I
suspect that university technology managers are the ones who get
patents for universities.)

While I can't be certain, I suspect that no one on the committee has
ever written a program.  Perhaps the small business person has, but
I'm not sure what line of business his company does.

Here are some notes about some of the questions, suggesting ideas you
might use.  @strong{Please don't copy these:} if you write your own
words, expressing your own ideas, your letter will carry more weight.
Look at these ideas, think about them, incorporate them into your
thinking or reject them, and then write a letter describing what you
think.

In their statement of question I (c), the Patent Office is straining
the meaning of the Supreme Court decision (Diamond vs Deihr).  See the
LPF position paper and (for greater depth) Professor Samuelson's
article @cite{Communications of the ACM}, August 1990.  It will be
useful to point this fact out in your reply.

For I (d), the AT&T backing store patent is a good example of how
patents interfere with the advance of technology.  Likewise the RSA
encryption patent.

Question I (e) misses the point somewhat, because it asks
for a reason based on legal premises, rather than a reason based
on what does or does not serve society well.

For section I (f), I'd say that the courts have done a bad job, so
Congress should take it out of their hands.

Section I (h) and I (i) ask whether the PTO should take various steps
improve its operations.  Likewise sections VII and XI.  These steps
might help avoid some of the PTO's mistakes, but they could not
possibly solve the problem patents have started to create.

At best, these reforms can reduce the number of patents issued in the
future.  They will not do anything about the multitude of existing
patents, or even about those now being examined as the reforms are
implemented.

Suppose these steps cut the number of future patents in half; how much
will that alleviate the problem caused by the patent system?  Not
much, because of the phenomenon of overkill.

A country attacked by only half of the US or Soviet nuclear arsenal
would be nearly as devastated as if it had been attacked by the whole
stock of missiles.  That is overkill.  Since it is easy for one large
program to infringe dozens of patents, the situation is likewise one
of overkill.  Eliminating even a large fraction of the patents will
not avert the disaster; what is necessary is to get the patent system
out of the way of programmers.

Section II is interesting, because it suggests Federal help for
keeping ideas as trade secrets.

Now, you might think that keeping something secret is a matter of not
telling anyone if you don't want him or her to know the secret.  But
that's not the kind of secret in question here.  Trade secret law is
designed so that, after you tell a person a secret, the government
will help you force him or her to keep it secret for you.

It has long been recognized that trade secrecy is antisocial.  In
fact, the desire to discourage trade secrecy was one of the principal
motives that led the founding fathers to set up the US patent system.

Trade secrecy is not one of the issues that the League is concerned
with.  But perhaps if the government did less to help people keep
secrets secret, there would be less need for patents to induce them
not to try.

Section III asks whether the ``cost of patent enforcement'' is too
high.  Note the bias here for patent holders and against the victims
of patents.  I wonder whether the cost of defense against patents is
too high.

Section VIII asks about the merits of a 20-year term from the date of
filing, versus a 17-year term from the date of issue.  The most
important thing here is that these are both ridiculously long for a
field like computers.

Section XII proposes something very dangerous, since it would allow
your employer to file a patent application without your cooperation,
and probably even without your knowledge.

@heading Watch Out for the Word ``Protection''

``Protection'' is the standard word lawyers use to describe monopolies
such as patents.  They like patents because patents generate business.
They like the word because it has a positive connotation: it suggests
the prevention of something destructive and wrong.

In a discussion with lawyers, you may feel pressed to use the same
word, so as not to sound ignorant.  If you do, you will give implicit
support to the underpinnings of their position each time you use it.
That is not a good way to prevail over them in the long run.

Instead of adopting their word, take the opportunity when they use it
to explain its bias, and thus their bias.  You can say that you will
use instead a word that reflects your position the way ``protection''
reflects theirs: the word ``monopoly''.

Another useful thing you can say is that the only protection you need
is protection from patents.

@heading Copyrighted Program-to-Program Interfaces

On May 15, the European Community adopted the software copyright
directive which seems to provide for copyrighted protocols, data
formats and programming languages.

In April, when the directive was considered by the European
Parliament, the Legal Affairs Committee recommended changes to solve
this problem for certain kinds of interfaces.  They proposed adding
the following text:

@quotation
Whereas, these unprotectible items include, for example,
protocols for communication, rules for exchanging or mutually using
information that has been exchanged, formats for data, and the
syntax and semantics of a programming language;
@end quotation

This amendment was rejected after serious debate in which the
conservative party especially opposed it.  The importance given to the
question shows that it was regarded as a substantive change---that
Parliament believes the law as written permits copyright on the syntax
and semantics of a programming language.

The principal supporters of these broad and dangerous monopolies were
a few large computer companies: IBM, Digital, Apple and Siemens.
(Only one of them is a European company.)  Many smaller companies
formed the European Committee for Interoperable Systems to lobby 
against interface monopolies, but had little success.

What about the United States?

Ashton-Tate is once again pushing its case for a copyright on the
programming language used in DBase.  Last winter, the judge ruled that
the copyright on DBase was invalid because Ashton-Tate had failed to
inform the copyright office that part of the program was an earlier,
public domain program made at JPL.

It turns out that the ``part'' in question was the programming
language---no part of the program at all!

More recently, the judge reversed his own decision.  The case is now
proceeding.

The latest version of the System V Interface Definition claims that
the interface is copyrighted.  Adobe says the Postscript language is
copyrighted.  You can bet that IBM, Digital and Apple are telling
Congress loud and clear that programming languages should be
copyrighted.  And they will point to the European law as proof this is
the best policy.

@heading The Finnish League for Programming Freedom

An organization like the LPF was set up in Finland in late April,
after a League member went to Finland to speak about the new
monopolies at a technical seminar at Helsinki University of
Technology.  Students at the university, attending the talk, decided
it was time to break out of their inertia and organize.

Richard Stallman will spend all of June speaking throughout Europe,
hoping to organize similar groups in Norway, England, France, Denmark,
Germany, Holland and Switzerland.

@heading How One League Member Did Something for the Cause

Geoffrey Knauth, a member of the League, found he was using a piece
of Lotus software on a Next machine to help manage a rowing event.
He was asked by the local Next Users Group to write about this activity.

In the article he wrote, he mentioned his mixed feelings about the
program he was using, because it came from Lotus.  The result was to
catch the attention of the readers for the issue of interface
copyright.  He even received notes of support from Lotus employees.

Whenever you write an article about a subject related to computers,
consider whether you might be able to work in a pertinent reference to
the League and its issues.  Keep the idea in mind, and you may see how
to use it.

@heading Please Collect Some Information for Us to Use

We may be able to strengthen our case against software patents if we
have more information of the following sorts:

@itemize @bullet
@item
Names of companies that have been "surprised" by patents, plus details
if possible.

@item
Names of companies that primarily make their money by
blackmailing other companies with threats, plus details if possible.

@item
Products that have been forced off the market due to software
patent or interface copyright.

@item
Companies that have been pushed out of business in this way.

@item
Products that were not released because of monopolistic threats.
@end itemize

If you happen to find out about any examples of these things, please
inform the League.

@heading Other Activities Needed

The League has not been as active this year as it was last year, and
hasn't been in the news as much.  This is something we need to try to
change.

Here are some possible reasons for the decreased activity.

One is that we have no obvious ways to make a big splash with our
activities.  Our position papers have already been published, and we
don't have any more to publish.  Demonstrations as a tactic seem to
have diminishing returns in terms of publicity, because the media
become inured to them.

Another is that members don't seem to be eager to do work on making
activities happen.  The League only does what its members do.  In
order for the League to do things, members need to plan them and carry
them out.  For the League to do more, and be noticed more, we need
more members to participate.

But this year, we have had trouble finding people even to answer them
mail reliably.  That's not a good state of affairs.

Perhaps there are things that the League could do to help stimulate
members' enthusiasm for working on League activities.  For example,
having meetings in various cities might be useful.  Publishing a more
attractive and more interesting newsletter might help.  However, both
of these things take work in themselves.

Would anyone like to do this?

If you would like to organize a meeting of the League members in your
area, send mail to league@@prep.ai.mit.edu or phone Richard Stallman
at (617) 253-8830 if you don't have Internet mail.  We will send you
the membership list so you can contact people.  You could also
announce the meeting to the general public, and use it as an occasion
for recruiting.

A meeting with thirty people attending is not a lot of work, and can
do some good.

@bye