Hughes Gareth: Patents Bill — Second Reading 
Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume 
Hughes Gareth: Patents Bill — Second Reading 
[Sitting date: 12 September 2012. Volume:683;Page:5173. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.] 
GARETH HUGHES (Green) 
: 
 Kia ora Mr Speaker. Nga mihi nui ki a koutou. Kia ora. I rise to speak on the Patents Bill and its ugly cousin the Minister’s amendments. I am pleased to be saying the Green Party will be voting against this bill on its second reading. I mean talk about messing it up. It is high time we updated our antiquated 1950s patent law. I know it is laughed at around the world. It is laughed at by patent lawyers. It is good we are modernising it but talk about messing it up. Where we have messed it up where the Minister has dropped the ball is around software patents. The Minister has irresponsibly tabled this significant amendment which has muddied this crystal-clear unambiguous consensus that came out of the Commerce Committee that software should not be patented. 
Software should not be patented because what we are talking about is code. It is like we are talking about maths. Copyright is fine. This is about protecting New Zealand’s thriving growing information and communications technology and software development industry. Foss has muddied the waters with the introduction of two new words—only two words—“as such” which is what is scaring our thriving industry. The industry quite rightly I think is describing it as a stab in the back. They are describing it as being thrown under the bus. These are not your extremists. These are people like the New Zealand Institute of IT Professionals. We are talking about the Open Source Society. We are talking about InternetNZ. We are talking about some very respected very influential people and we hope the Government listens to them because it has introduced this huge legal— 
Clare Curran 
: Orion Health 
GARETH HUGHES 
: I do not want to miss anyone out: the Open Source Society Orion Health and Jade Software Corporation Ltd. I have got only 5 minutes so I will not go through the whole list because there are another 1000 people and software developers who have added their names to this list. 
So the Government introduced this huge legal loophole with no consultation and with no ability for the Commerce Committee to have any scrutiny over it. It is highly irresponsible. The Government is looking to Europe but I do not know why you would look to Europe on this measure when what we see there is a great deal of litigation. What we want to see in New Zealand if we want to see our economy going forward is we want to have our innovators innovating. We do not want to have our innovators litigating and that is exactly what we are going to see under this bill. The Government has thrown away that consensus. We saw on the select committee that software should not be patentable—copyright is perfectly fine. You know it was a unanimous call out of the select committee out of all the parties involved. 
I think it is patently absurd that this Government is standing up here today saying: “Well we don’t think the software should be patented too.” If that is what it believes it should say it in the laws of our country and not just say it in the House. This is what the IT industry wants to hear. And the key question that has got to be asked is who benefits from the changes— 
Hon Trevor Mallard 
: Microsoft. 
GARETH HUGHES 
: We know it is the multinationals. We know they are the ones with the deep pockets and the big legal teams that are going to benefit from this bill. I do not want to talk ill of patent lawyers because as Mr Cunliffe pointed out there is a great deal of defensive patenting. Many of them do a great job. What we want to see though is our creators be they manufacturers or software developers creating not litigating. 
We saw the Government sit on its hands for years despite the very strong calls of the industry to get a move on and pass the patents law as it came out. A big concern is that the Trans-Pacific Partnership was influencing that—I think quite rightly so. We see our Government literally throwing policemen out of helicopters to arrest an alleged copyright infringer—the Megaupload case—and the Skynet legal case laws. We saw the US Government offering to write the legislation for the Government. We should be rightly concerned. 
It is irresponsible because we have had no select committee scrutiny of this significant change to the legislation. It changes the whole effect of the law. I called for the Government to send it back to the select committee. I acknowledge that people have been waiting an awful long time for this law to get passed but they want to see a good law passed; they do not want to see this. 
We have heard only a red herring justification from the Government of why it is doing it. The fact is that this red herring that it is clasping on to is trying to mask the fishy thing that is happening. Everyone agrees that user-invented software should be patentable just not the software in it. The irony is that the Government is introducing even more legal uncertainty into the issue. We are going to see more legal cases and I think the Fisher and Paykels of this world should be concerned because now they are going to have to decide what “as such” means. It is going to be the lawyers who are going to be benefiting not the creators not the innovators and not the manufacturers. 
I would like to congratulate all the groups that have formed the No Software Patents in NZ group. It has come up with an elegant common-sense simple solution which I urge the Government to adopt. Look it is simple: the Government needs to either throw out this amendment before we vote on it or support the amendment.