[Ecommerce] Techdaily: Library Groups Urge PTO To Rethink 'Open Source' Stance

[Manon Anne Ress]

Technology Daily Sept. 5 PM Edition

Library Groups Urge PTO To Rethink 'Open Source' Stance
by Drew Clark

A group of five library associations on Thursday wrote to Patent and
Trademark Office (PTO) Director James Rogan to express "surprise and
dismay at recent statements" made by a PTO deputy about the "open
source" software-development model.

The American Library Association and the four other specialized library
groups urged Rogan to reverse the office's opposition to an
international meeting devoted to open-source software and other models
of "open and collaborative projects."

Unlike proprietary software, the programming code of open-source
software is freely available to anyone who seeks to obtain copies.
Microsoft and other proprietary companies have been critical of the
government's use of one type of open-source software on the grounds that
it undermines intellectual property rights.

But open-source advocates and a wide range of copyright lawyers disagree
with that assertion.
"Our software relies just as much on copyright law than does software
created by Microsoft," said Eban Mogelin, general counsel of the Free
Software Foundation, which creates the general public license used by
Linux, the most popular open-source product.
"The difference is not whether we rely on copyright but for what
purpose," Mogelin said. Proprietary software uses copyright to seek
profits, he said, but "we use copyright for a purpose more fully in
keeping with the intentions underlying the copyright system in the first
place -- to promote the progress of science and the useful arts."

The controversy most recently erupted after Lois Boland, the PTO's
acting director of international relations, told National Journal's
Technology Daily that the U.S. government opposes a conference of the
World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) devoted to topics
including open-source software.

Boland said WIPO's charter is "clearly limited to the protection of
intellectual property. To have a meeting whose primary objective is to
waive or remove those protections seems to go against the mission."

In an Aug. 22 letter to Boland, Ed Black, CEO of the Computer and
Communications Industry Association (CCIA) and founder of the new Open
Source and Industry Alliance (OSAIA), said those comments "reflect a
profound misunderstanding of open-source licenses and the copyright law."

In their letter to Rogan, the five library groups said PTO "openly
chastised [WIPO] for its favorable reaction to a proposal" by
distinguished scientists and open-source software advocates.
"The application of open and collaborative models raises important
intellectual property issues for the international community that WIPO
should be addressing," the library officials said in the letter, noting
that models like open-source software and the Human Genome Project "are
experiments in creative use of intellectual property law to achieve
socially responsible and productive ends."

Regarding the controversy over Boland's remarks, PTO spokeswoman Brigid
Quinn said, "There is no debate, and there has never been a debate
within the USPTO concerning the viability of underlying copyright
protection for so-called open-source software."





--
Manon Anne Ress
Consumer Project on Technology
www.cptech.org
PO Box 19367, Washington, DC 20036
manon.ress@cptech.org, voice: 1.202.387.8030, fax: 1.202.234.5176