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Here it is:

http://gallery.ffii.org/v/BxlStbRizox050706/c_2005_A_Barrionuevo_2_00007.jpg.html

Is this the Japanese numbering of Final Fantasy II, or the USA releases?
actually, the abbreviation stands for the Foundation for a Free Information Infrastructure, a not-for-profit organization that has campaigned (in Europe), among other things, against software patents, excessive "intellectual" "property" rights and for open standards.

My serious and optimistic view: Soon we will see computing interoperability and software development flourish and we will look back upon the MS dominant time where they were holding free software innovation and interoperability back as an annoying historic paranthesis.

The next important step in the world of computing now is to Stop software patents! To achieve the similar stimulance to software development as when the movie industry moved to California to avoid the film patents that were holding the film industry back on the east coast.

Support FFII and EFF

I guess noone is seriously interested in OOXML any more, but I collected some arguments about our company's opinions about OOXML recently.

If you are interested in reading people's blogs, here is mine about SCO finally dead! MS next?

Before we all rejoice, consider that (a) Microsoft can, and will appeal, delaying any verdict by another three years (b) the fines amount to about one month of net profits, (c) Microsoft is building a new franchise strategy based on software patents that makes this ruling irrelevant. I predict MSFT's share price will wobble and then climb as this sinks in.

It's very simple - you pay about USD$8 to distribute a print server, or you are violating MS's patents and liable to be sued.

The largest monopolist in history has faced down the largest economy in history, and won. It was the delay that mattered; during those six years, software patents have changed the rules. Patents trump anti-trust law (a cartel deal that would result in 20 years jail for the execs that signed it becomes legal when a single patent is added to the mix). Microsoft is using this to trump whatever the EU does.

We are very close to seeing the FOSS world split into two, one half owned by Microsoft and acting as a franchisee, and the other half operating in increasing 'illegality'. The only real competition to Microsoft's global monopoly in one of the most vital of industries is the FOSS economy, and it's the patent threat that the EU should have been looking at, not the out-of-date issue of documentation and bundling.

Please consider joining the global fight against software patents - join the FFII, start a national chapter, and get involved. Only the community is able to defend itself against Microsoft, our politicians and courts are totally out-manoevered.

All software 'tramples over intellectual property'. Half of the most basic interface features and algorithms used by *everyone* in the software industry are patented. It's pretty much impossible to write modern software (in countries that allow software patents) that doesn't infringe on multiple patents.

Here are some examples of patents granted (but not enforceable, it's a strange situation) in Europe. I suspect most of them have also been granted and *are* enforceable in the US.

http://eupat.ffii.org/patents/samples/index.en.html

Gotta love the FOSSie hypocrisy. Go ahead and accuse Microsoft of bribing the electorate, but FFII gets to offer a 'prize' to people who lobby against OOXML and nobody bats an eyelid. Good job!

No Linux code violates other's IP. Period!

There's no violation until a court of law states there is.

Yes, the FFII!!!

From a now "read only" wiki http://wiki.ffii.org/IstTamaiEn

I wrote that and later created a wikipedia entry in part due to someone having created a wikipedia entry on me that was in error regarding related project. It was removed with the general claim that it was original research along with the distroted wikipedia entry someone else created on myself.

Now I've expanded upon ffii wiki here http://threeseas.net/abstraction_physics.html And as anyone can read the notes and references, I've been at this for some near two decades. Software is provably not subject matter of patent-ability, however there is this matter of mindset changes to take affect and effect the clairity of understanding the genuine nature of what software is, that software patents are act of fraud. Fraud against the natural human ability to think and communicate in terms of abstraction at higher level than other identified animal species.

After near twenty years of effort to communicate this and the fundamentals of abstraction physics, it seem its beginning to take hold and move in a direction of educational teaching. The USPTO knows of my effort. see the notes and references.

Its about proof of the non-patent-ability of software. Its not about politics unless you are trying to fabricate an excuse to ignore the fact that software is made up of what is universally agreed upon as to what is not patentable. Natural Law, Physical Phenomenon, Abstract ideas, mathematical equations, etc...

There is a lot already vested in Software Patents and its difficult to just suddenly disallow them as it will cause a disruption in business economics. But wrongs must be corrected!!!! Make no mistake about it. IBM is presenting a good example of what needs to happen. They are a major software patent holder and have a lot at stake. They are also on the mailing list of "open source as prior art" and I would imagine the mailing list for patent application peer-review that the USPTO has recently begun testing.

What IBM is doing is involuntarily removing the threat of their patent holdings by making them available for free use by others. And this is exactly what needs to happen.
Business is not that bad guy! It is people in control who make bad choices. So the conversion of the vested interest into un-invested needs to be voluntary right now. once the momentum picks up, then enough weight will move changes in government policy regarding software patents in the US. Software patents should have never been allowed, but happen through court rooms not in the public eye. Hindsight is 20/20.

If I was a business that got caught up in the "get your software patented" or be forced out of business by those who do, AND then after doing so software patents are suddenly disallowed......You can be damn sure I'd YELL "ENTRAPMENT!!!"

It took 300 years for the general population to move to the hindu-arabic decimal system from Roman numerals.... But this conversion towards correction with todays technology and rate of advancement will certainly happen a lot faster. Especially with pressure in other ways regarding computer science.

If you need real information on the state of software patents in Europe, without the lies and half-thruths we see from the patent establishment and some politicians, FFII is the place to go. These are the people who have done most of the hard work to avoid software patents in Europe.

We still have problems with software patents in Europe. The main problem is that the European Patent Office (EPO) is still issuing of thousands of software patents, although the European Patent Convention (EPC) clearly and explicitly states that software as such is not patentable. But EPO has reinterpreted EPC several times over the years, and now their interpretation basically is: "If the software works it is no longer software as such, and can thus be patented."

So now we have tens of thousands of software patents that have been issued by EPO. These software patents are illegal according the the law, and if a patent holder tries to assert such a patent in a court of law, it will be ruled invalid. This creates political pressure from the patent holders to get their patents legalized. And of course the EPO wants to have the text of the EPC changed so it fits their perverted "interpretation".

EPO has twice called for a diplomatic conference where they asked for this change in EPC. Both times their request was denied. A diplomatic conference is the only proper way to change EPC, as this treaty is not an EU treaty.

When that failed, they tried lobbying the EU to create law that would force all EU member states to change their patent laws to legalize software patents. This was the infamous CII directive, and was voted down by the EU parliament in the second reading.

When trying to force the EU member states to change their patent laws failed, they tried another backdoor. This was the EPLA. Basically this was meant to be a new specialized european patent court, with judges appointed by the EPO. This new court was meant to be above all other courts, including the European Court of Justice and the supreme courts of all the member countries. The idea was that the EPO could then make their "interpretation" of EPC case law. Fortunately this is off the table (for now).

But the pressure to legalize software patents is still there, and the EPO is still issuing illegal software patents. Even the EU Commission (who have been on the side of EPO since a few years before the CII directive was proposed) has had to acknowledge that EPO is outside any political or administrative control. And the EPO has nothing to fear, as they are above the law. (Really: If an EPO employee commits a murder, he cannot be prosecuted unless the EPO accepts it.)

No. Read software patents. Software patents cover the trivial aspects. A mars landing is complicated, rocket science, but it is easy to describe the process as it is done in patent writings: rocket device equipped With oxygen supply unit magically sent to Moon, interaction between the fuel supply unit associated with the engine device, not to forget a rocket engine steering unit.. Is a mars landing trivial. No. But a patent on a mars landing would cover all the stuff you know when I say "Mars landing". http://eupat.ffii.org/analysis/trivial/index.en.ht ml

There wouldn't be such a directive if Germany hadn't pushed this forward the whole way.

I doubt it, since this was mainly pushed through by the UK Presidency. And pretty much the only fundamental opposition came from Ireland. But guess what: not because they're against data retention (in fact, a framework decision on this topic was approved under Ireland's presidency of the Council), but because they don't think it's a third pillar competence (the data retention directive was a codecision procedure).

That's how you bypass national legislature in Europe nowadays.

I'll be the last to argue that the the EU Council of Ministers is working well according to democratic standards, but at the same time I don't see anything Germany-specific about this particular directive or law.

For how long ? ..

OK, so that wasn't really fair. :-)

Here's the executive summary: http://www.quebecoislibre.org/000902-3.htm

Some more references:
http://wiki.ffii.org/Martin041109En
http://www.mises.org/journals/jls/15_2/15_2_1.pdf
http://www.iht.com/articles/2006/05/21/business/wh o.php
http://www.guardian.co.uk/globalisation/story/0,73 69,665969,00.html
http://www.dklevine.com/general/intellectual/again st.htm
http://www.thenation.com/doc/20020805/newman200207 25
http://www.economist.com/printedition/displaystory .cfm?story_id=5014990

"Within the past five or six years, economists in particular have started to question the USPTO's practices, finding little correlation, if any, between patent proliferation and invention. Economists have identified many situations in which patents actually retard the introduction of new products. "
http://members.forbes.com/asap/2002/0624/044.html

Here are a couple of consequences of the text as voted by the EP. This directive was not and has never been about piracy (although some lobby organisations have tried to hijack it for that purpose). It is only about EU competence extension.

And fwiw, it does not exclude private users from criminal sanctions. The approved amendment reads:

(b) "infringements on a commercial scale" means any infringement of an intellectual property right committed to obtain a commercial advantage; this excludes acts carried out by private users for personal and not-for-profit purposes;

So it says it's on a commercial scale (one of the conditions for an infringement to be in the scope of this directive) if it is "to obtain a commercial advantage". It goes on to say that this "excludes" private users, but that is simply not true. This extra sentence about private users is not phrased as an explicit exclusion, but as an statement which supposedly explains what the first part achieves. However, "obtaining a commercial advantage" can be interpreted as "spending less money". For example when someone illegally downloads a song from the Internet, that person has a commercial advantage.

The Greens had tabled an amendment to actually exclude private users properly, but it was not carried. It read:

(b)For the purpose of this directive "on a commercial scale" means a large number of repeated infringements committed in pursuit of a direct pecuniary gain, excluding in particular any act carried out by a private person not intended to earn a profit.

As you see, here the private use is explicitly excluded, rather than just in a supposedly explanatory statement. And "direct pecuniary gain" and "earning a profit" are quite more strict than "obtaining a commercial advantage".

The FFII and the Vrijschrift.org Foundation tell us some more about how bad it could be.

The big one as far as I'm concerned is ``incitement to infringe'', which could open software writers to massive problems.

I hate to break it to you, troll, but "M$" is getting nailed by the very system you claim they enjoy. Ever heard of Eolas? I'd really appreciate it if you showed us a single instance of Microsoft (oh, "M$") using a patent offensively. That does not include FAT32, which is about as common a licensing scheme as it comes in the hardware world.

Microsoft plays the game the same way IBM and everyone else does to protect themselves from the patent trolls. The system is broken. Constantly harping on why "M$ is teh bad" like Stallman is not going to help much.

Abstract of EP0689133 A method for displaying on a computer screen multiple sets of information needed on a recurring basis, comprising the steps of: (1) Establishing an area on the computer screen in which the multiple sets of information are to be displayed, the established area having a maximum size which is substantially less than the entire area of the screen. (2) Providing within the established area a plurality of selection indicators, one for each of the multiple sets of information. (3) Selecting one of the multiple sets of information for display within the established area by pointing to one of the selection indicators within the established area, whereby the selected set of information will be substituted within the established area for the set of information previously being displayed therein. A selected set of information may also be moved out of the selected area by pointing to its selection indicator and dragging it away.

No true... The European Patent Office has illegally granted several software patents against the letter and spirit of the law so we actually DO HAVE patents like "one click" ... not that specific patent, but several very similar like the Amazon gift sending patent.

http://eupat.ffii.org/

This directive is about forcing the member states to criminalise certain behaviours. They may go further themselves. It is important to keep the directive proportional, otherwise broad criminalisation will be all over the Community (Europe), and it is impossible / very hard to turn that back.

Inciting an infringement is not an infringement, but it will be a crime, as far as the EP Legal Affairs committee is concerned.

See also: http://www.ipred.org/
http://action.ffii.org/ipred2/

Besides this all we have strict civil law.

Pro-software patent industry lobby group.

'nuff said!

You are all suffering from hindsight bias, you all think you've used linked and double links and n-linked lists before but in reality you were using vectors and this is a genuine innovation. ;)

Here in the EU, JURI is trying to criminalize all IP infringements again:
http://press.ffii.org/Press_releases/Criminal_Sanc tions_Rapporteur_fails_to_protect_European_industr y

The vote is expected 20th March (tomorrow) with the aim of making minor copyright, trademark and patent infringement into a criminal offense. There is no fair use in Europe either.
This has little to do with the real world, EU has no jurisdiction in European criminal law, but if it can make a trade issue into a criminal law issue it can expand EU control in that direction. So JURI has cooked up this trick whereby IP rights are claimed as a trade issue and pumped it up to claim infringement needs criminal prosecutions.

because

a) there are no patents (yet*) in Europe, so we can still use it.

b) the more small targets MS has, the more difficult it will be for them to cause real damage before we get the law changed to stop their suits and close them down

c) we can learn much abou the Windows API which only real study can teach us. This will be useful in anti-trust lawsuits if nothing else

* http://ffii.org/

"It seems like that if you are against software patents you must be against patents in order for it to make sense..."

It may seem like that but only if you have little if any knowledge of the patent system - its history, economics and law - and an extremely distorted view of what the opposition to software patents is all about.

http://eupat.ffii.org/vreji/cusku/index.en.html#iu ris http://www.bailii.org/ew/cases/EWHC/Patents/2005/1 589.html http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id =959931 http://www.firstmonday.org/issues/issue8_3/kahin/i ndex.html#k7 http://www.researchineurope.org/policy/patentdirlt r.htm

It is also important to realise that the Patent Offices are not and never can be the arbiters of what constitute the great inventions of the day. The patent system is not some prize-giving system, only granting patents to the truly worthy inventors, and in order to be fair and objective, the P.Os can only - at best - reject the truly meritless or clearly unpatentable applications. It may be possible to raise the "inventive step" a little and improve patent quality a little but only in hindsight and in the subjective opinion of some is the 1-click patent a "stupid" patent. In fact a case can easily be made that it was more desirable from the point of view of the economic rationale of the patent system to grant the 1-click patent than it was to grant the RSA patent. The salient point though is that it was neither necessary nor efficient to grant either patent in order that society, the economy and the progress of the sciences and useful arts would benefit from those inventions.

The way european democracy works is that if the non-elected european commission chooses to have SW patents after some hollidays sponsored by big american SW compagnies, all the european countries will have to implement them fast or be fined.

The way european democracy works is that if the non-elected european commission chooses to have SW patents after some hollidays sponsored by big american SW compagnies, all the european countries will have to implement them fast or be fined.

One of the most important difference of software compared other tangible products is, it doesn't cost to duplicate once a software product is developed. The other major difference is, it doesn't even cost to distribute even if to the whole world thanks to peer-to-peer (P2P) networks.

A minor, student or single person can easily infringe one or many software patents by writing a small computer program. That is, you don't have to be a company to violate Software Patents.

Software Patents are the single most danger faced today by the students, end users, software developers, scientists, companies especially small ones, etc.

Therefore, Software Patents strongly discourage if not completely stop innovation and advancement of science and technology.

Software Patents allow few big companies to earn money with following two dangers to the public:
1. Software Patents holder has no obligation to give a license to others.

2. Even if Software Patents holder agrees to give a license to others, there is no obligation for them to give at price affordable for others.

By using either or both above points they can simply cutoff others from implementing a technology or advancement of a technology. Please note, the technique used is cutoff, not compete.

Today I'm sitting on a product that I developed by advancing the technology using innovative ideas, but I cannot release it to the world either free or at fee unless I violate one single patent owned by a large company.

I wrote to that company asking how much royalty do I have to pay, there is no reply from them. They want us to violate the law and sue us later. They do not want to compete with us, they simply want to cutoff us from competition.

By being a victim of Software Patents, my suggestion is software should be managed by Copyright laws, not by Patent laws. If somebody does not want to given me a license for a software product, I can still sit and develop a functionally equivalent one as if I'm writing a new book without violating law.

This is how major industries such as music, movie, book publishing operates.

Sagara W

Following links may give you a better understanding of this Software Patents issue:
1. Public Patent Foundation ( http://www.pubpat.org/ )
2. http://www.nosoftwarepatents.com/
3. Software Patents vs Parliamentary Democracy ( http://swpat.ffii.org/index.en.html )
4. Petition for a Software Patent Free Europe ( http://petition.eurolinux.org/index_html )
5. Software Patents Gone Bad ( http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1895,1666755,00.as p )

This is clear that the EU is *not* trying to implement this it's the *individual governments* that are going the draconian route - so your argument goes out of the window completely.

No, it doesn't. These laws are merely the implementation of a European directive which was approved earlier on. Further, the article is plain wrong when it claims that the Netherlands is going further than what the directive requires by recording where you are during a mobile phone call, because that's literally required by the directive.

The German proposal could be interpreted as going further, although the directive does say that the sender and recipient of all emails must be logged, and what good does this logging do if you can't identify these people? It's therefore very much "in the spirit" of the directive.

That said, you can't just blame this on "the EU" either, since one of the reasons the directive is so bad as it is, is because the Council of Ministers (which consists of ministers of the various national governments) pushed through the adopted "compromise" text (which was not a compromise at all) through Parliament (together with the leadership of the EP's Socialist and Christian Democrat groups).

Other part is that Holland pays the most contribution, granted it is a rich nation, but we also get less and less to say.

The EU is indeed not a publicly traded company where the country which "invests" most has the most to say. And every country gets less power as the EU expands, that's logical.

That said, you're absolutely right that the EU has a huge democratic deficit, and that the NO's in the referenda on the constitution were a serious wake-up call to the member states which they are ignoring because they have no answers to them.

But on the other hand you are over-generalising. At least in my experience, the EP is not "corrupt to the very core of its existence". There quite a lot honest, well-meaning and hardworking people there, ranging from administration to actual Members of the EP (MEPs). In many cases (though certainly not in all, just look at e.g. the data retention directive), misguided decisions however do not come from corruption or malevolence, but from lack of hearing contravening viewpoints (or not hearing them from enough people with different backgrounds).

And while you can blame everything on the press and on politicians, a very big problem is that most people consider that after they have cast their ballot, they have done their democratic duty and are finished for the next 5 years in case of European elections (but this problem is by no means limited to European politics). At least I thought that way before I got involved in the FFII and software patents directive. The problems with this attitude are that

• politicians do not work in a vacuum, and most do not want to take decisions from an ivory tower

• large companies and other interest groups know this very well, and spoon feed politicians with whatever kind of information they want

And if a politician never hears any contravening viewpoints and the arguments of the interest groups look sound at first sight, they will follow it most of the time. After all, nobody is an expert in all things. A very nice example is someone pretty high up in the Commission who said in relation to the software patents directive that everything seemed so simple before the FFII appeared on the scene, and that now they don't know what is good anymore and what isn't. Of course most weren't intentionally trying to disadvantage small companies, they just didn't realise it. They simply thought they were helping the EU IT industry to compete better with its US competitors.

And as the FFII proved in the software patents case, you actually can make a difference. The EU is not some kind of machine or computer with a predetermined program; just like the rest of society it's made up out of a lot of different people and exactly because it is so huge, you're always bound to find a few people inside the system who agree with you and which can help you get started. And once you are in (e.g., you can get in the EP to talk to people there), it's just a matter of doing lots of work.

The FFII (who also fight against software patents, and for open standards) has been working to modify IPRED2 and/or get it rejected, for many months.

The FFII's IPRED2 project needs your help. Defeating this directive requires a lot of analysis and writing of amendments, which is done by volunteers, but we also have to bring lobbyists to Brussels to do the groundwork with MEPs. That costs money - for travel, hotel, food, and in some cases, to pay people's time, because it's hard to spend months in Brussels without any income.

I know all this because I'm the FFII's president, and the only reason I accepted to take that (unpaid) job, a year and a half ago, was because this is the only pan-European organisation capable of fighting against software patents, and other bogus laws like IPRED2, effectively.

The new EFF team in Brussels actually consists of an ex-FFII activist, who is still on the IPRED2 workgroup, along with a dozen or more others. So if you want to help, give the FFII your support. See the FFII's donations page for how to make a donation.

Please have a look at a presentation I gave in the EP to interested assistants and MEPs about this. Although it may not be that clear without the accompanying commentary, I hope it still can clarify some of the important points.

Basically, the problem is that it does not only apply to commercial scale copyright piracy and trademark counterfeiting, but also criminalises

• Alleged trademark confusion, e.g. Burger King v. Wholebake, or L'oreal SA & Ors v Bellure NV & Ors

• Infringements on database rights. As you may know, database rights only apply in case a "substantial investment" occurred, but how is a competitor supposed to know this in advance? Further, case law on this new "right" is still very much in development (slides 14-15 of the presentation, e.g. a case about a company selling an electronic version of a phone directory )

• Non-piracy related copyright infringements: e.g. Deutsche Bahn (the German national railway corporation) has been convicted for copyright infringement, because it altered the plans of the architect which designed their new Berlin railway station in a way which the architect considered to be infringing on his copyright. Another very nice on: a museum which is being sued for repairing an artwork which consisted of a urinal, because that person who destroyed it considered the "destroyed urinal" as a work of art in itself.

• Then there are also registered and unregistered design rights, which like database rights are not examined at all for validity. If you start threatening criminal prosecution for infringing on "right" which may not be valid in the first place, you get really chilling effects in the market place.

If you have time to read only one background paper on this completely idiotic and misguided directive, have a look at the position paper of the Chartered Institute of Patent Attorneys. But those of the Law Society of England and Wales and Max Planck Institute for Intellectual Property, Competition and Tax Law are also very good. You can find a lot more position papers on FFII's IPRED2 workgroup page under "External opinions"

Unlike the software patents directive, this is not a case of big companies vs small ones. Pretty much everyone except for the IFPI (music publishing industry) are trashing this directive like there's no tomorrow. And if you want to know why it is nevertheless being pushed through by the Commission, read my ENDitorial in the previous EDRI-gram.

Please have a look at a presentation I gave in the EP to interested assistants and MEPs about this. Although it may not be that clear without the accompanying commentary, I hope it still can clarify some of the important points.

Basically, the problem is that it does not only apply to commercial scale copyright piracy and trademark counterfeiting, but also criminalises

• Alleged trademark confusion, e.g. Burger King v. Wholebake, or L'oreal SA & Ors v Bellure NV & Ors

• Infringements on database rights. As you may know, database rights only apply in case a "substantial investment" occurred, but how is a competitor supposed to know this in advance? Further, case law on this new "right" is still very much in development (slides 14-15 of the presentation, e.g. a case about a company selling an electronic version of a phone directory )

• Non-piracy related copyright infringements: e.g. Deutsche Bahn (the German national railway corporation) has been convicted for copyright infringement, because it altered the plans of the architect which designed their new Berlin railway station in a way which the architect considered to be infringing on his copyright. Another very nice on: a museum which is being sued for repairing an artwork which consisted of a urinal, because that person who destroyed it considered the "destroyed urinal" as a work of art in itself.

• Then there are also registered and unregistered design rights, which like database rights are not examined at all for validity. If you start threatening criminal prosecution for infringing on "right" which may not be valid in the first place, you get really chilling effects in the market place.

If you have time to read only one background paper on this completely idiotic and misguided directive, have a look at the position paper of the Chartered Institute of Patent Attorneys. But those of the Law Society of England and Wales and Max Planck Institute for Intellectual Property, Competition and Tax Law are also very good. You can find a lot more position papers on FFII's IPRED2 workgroup page under "External opinions"

Unlike the software patents directive, this is not a case of big companies vs small ones. Pretty much everyone except for the IFPI (music publishing industry) are trashing this directive like there's no tomorrow. And if you want to know why it is nevertheless being pushed through by the Commission, read my ENDitorial in the previous EDRI-gram.

The problem could be that infringement is not the same as piracy. The FFII explains where to draw the line. Their recommendation is to adopt the definitions of the Max-Planck-Institution .

On the one hand civil rights group advocate to criminalise piracy and counterfeit while the proposal of the Commission actually criminalises "all infringements". Plus "incitting, abetting infringements", that is very very broad, hmm? The Open Rights Group explains it very well.

It is not about piratebay or piracy and counterfeit, it is about ordinary online businesses where 'infringement' is unevitable and a matter of everyday business. You get alerted by the rightsholder and take content down. Else a civil court will process the case. When you are a manager of an online community as Youtube, it is not the police that arrests you for "inciting infringements" of intellectual property rights, infringements by user generated context. That would change. Due diligence could well be interpreted as 'intentional infringement'. Someone posts copyright protected content in your web forum, you become a criminal. In civil law there are already similar interpretations.

Or think of grey cases. How easy is it to infringe a trademark or a patent? Because we don't really know the scope of the right.

The business case against ipred2 is very good. Reportedly even the BSA was against it.

We are not talking about rational anti-piracy regulation but insanity which messes up IPR regulation and criminal law.

Consider the FFII: http://action.ffii.org/ipred2 http://www.ipred.org/

The process is clearly not exhaustive, because of the amount of prior art that is typically missed. Perhaps you meant exhausting. But even so, that doesn't mean it was meritorious or worthwhile (you could waste a lifetime of work making a marshmallow car. If no-one wants marshmallow cars, you've just wasted your life) - in this case you're telling someone to do work on satisifying the patent monopoly bureaucracy in a purely artificial system*. The work effort would be better spent on developing something cool (the fact you say "find something to patent" shows how low the USA has sunk - mere discoveries("finds") aren't supposed to be patentable in the first place), profitting, and pumping some of the profit back into the campaign to abolish the patent monopoly system (which ultimately needs to go the way the institution of slavery went).

*In fact, it's now been shown that that patenting work activity SUBSTITUTES for research activity, at least in the software field. That is to say, the patent system isn't just not encouraging innovation and progress, it's actually actively discouraging it. Brilliant.

Translation: It seems that a large portion of software begins getting pirated by kids and it's much cheaper for us to do an education campaign than it is to plug up our court system with all the priacy lawsuits.

Seen any of the latest BSA advertisements lately. Maybe this is the reason they want to get kids of patented software.
http://swpat.ffii.org/gasnu/bsa/index.en.html

It may be easier to keep them off pirated software this way to keep them out of jail.
This software from overseas has a legal liability. It's time to move on and mitigate the liability. It is one of the reasons I am using Ubuntu on my home built PC.

True enough that Novell has eliminated the risk only for their customers. The trouble is Novell can not negotiate for the whole community they can only negotiate for themselves and in this case for their customers.

If my neighbour were to pay protection money to the mafia, I would want no part of it; I'd require him to leave my neighbourhood for putting the rest of us in danger. We don't want Novell or anybody else to pay protection money on behalf of everyone to somebody who doesn't deserve it, much like we don't want the government to give in to some airplane hijacker's demands and give him a million dollars plus a refuel; that only results in more hijackings. The community doesn't need collective "protection" from perceived legal threats, when we can simply ask our legislature to remove the ground from under those threats. You take out insurances against things neither you nor the insurance agent can predict, not against frivolous demands made by the insurance agent or against well-known consequences of the law.

I still look at the flow of money. It is from MS to Novell. Why would MS pay Novell for Novell's customers right to use their patents? Seems that the "insurer" is paying the insured in this case. Not your typical "protection money" scheme.

Who says "payment" has to be made in cash? Novell and Microsoft made a deal where both parties agreed to contribute. Among other things, Novell contributed a commitment not to sue Microsoft's customers, just as Microsoft promised not to sue Novell's. Why would those two commitments be valued to exactly the same price? Microsoft ended up giving Novell some change to cover the difference. If you return a malfunctioning TV set to the store within the warranty period, but agree to buy a cheaper model instead and receive the difference as a credit worth $20, would you say the "seller" pays you to accept the new TV?

And the mafia guy could very well grant a hefty "rebate" to the first buyer of his fire insurance, simply to be able to point at one happy "customer" when selling the same insurance to his neighbours (without the rebate).

To me the ideal solution would be for the Linux community to "buy up" or have contributed a number of patents for integration into Linux. Then the community has a patent portfolio to protect them against MS or other large companies who may want to sue for patent infringement. That is how the corporations use their patents in most cases, defensively.

Patents are like paper money, in that there is a potentially infinite supply of them. Where the Federal Reserve (or your corresponding national entity) could find reason to print more banknotes, the Patent Office issues new patents at the request of businesses. However, if the "currency" thus issued doesn't match up with something of value being held by either office, the result is inflation. If we engage in a virtual landgrab, trying to buy the "rights" to everything that is scribbled down on a piece of paper, there will be no shortage of scribblings covering gradually tinier portions of this virtual territory. Some critics of the patent system argue that this is what we are doing already today. Since free software is usually being distributed without demands for monetary compensation, where are we going to find the money to pay for all those patents? Do you expect us to outspend big business, like the USA outspent the USSR in much the same fashion during the cold war?

Politicians need someone to talks to. But who represents Linux? Difficult. Invite Richard Stallman or Alan Cox? No the best idea but it happens all the time. Linux Foundation sounds to an uninitiated reader as the name of a benevolent organisation behind Linux development.

For anti-software patent advocacy that groups would be real poison. Linux Foundation in favour of useless patent shield red herrings, this will make advocacy easy for patent agents which fight for their vested interests very well.

You know, Suse was a nice company. There was a joke when Novell overtook Suse that no company survived Novell for long. Then we watched Suse management which left the comnpany. We saw a good Linux distribution changed with ideological techology decisions. No user of Suse requested them (Gnome-focus, red carpet mess, 10.1 ...),

I remember how passionate Suse management and Suse employees supported the fight against software patents in the EU. What has Novell ever done to put an end to software patent madness in the EU?
I know what RedHat does to lobby for patent reform. RedHat owns patents but they strongly oppose the patent system for the sake of their developers who request market security.

The simple test of what Novell thinks about software patents is: look what they lobbied for. Or what they did not lobby for.

But Novell? They don't care about developers. Instead they play patent games with Microsoft. 150 millions? Get a trusted lobbying party 5 millions for lobbying and softpatents will be gone, on a worldwide scale within four years. You cannnot solve the patent mess with insurances or patent indemnification. It just does not work.

In Europe it is common knowledge that the US patent system is broken. In Europe things are not even much better, we have an insane management of the patent system but all options are still in place to change the situation, to reverse the trend. Our lobbying turned out to be very succesful and continues to contribute to change of the pratice. In the US it gets more difficult. They don't have a technical contribution requirement. "Usefulness" is a weak weak weak criteria.

But what do concerned parties in the US do? They follow the remaining two screws novelty/prior art and non-obviousness which are nothing but red herrings when it comes to patent reform discussions. You can solve the patent problem when you start to debate subject matter. Patents make absolutely no sense for software and fulfil no useful purpose. Novell should know that and support lobbying.

How misguided is Novell's management? Do they really believe a deal with Microsoft contributes to market security, pleases customers? We do not forget Caldera.

We feel afraid!

It is further intresting to watch that the EU wants to make all infringements of an intellectual property right a criminal offense. That is not the case right now... for good reasons. So don't spit on the Americans, Europeans are equally crazy.

See here

Mental Peace? If Novell wanted to pay for their customers peace of mind, they should invest in softpat lobbying as Suse did. As a Suse customer the Novell deal would make me pretty nervous as I was irritated when they pushed for premature Ximian technology in Suse, esp. tainted technology such as Mono, the implementation of MS .NET which will likely infringe their patents. We have a look at Novell-MS and think back: Caldera/SCO. Novell, we don't know on what side they are or will be.

150 Millions for license deals? 15 millions for lobby campaigners and the problem will soon be gone, forever, on a worldwide scale.

Lobbying is the only way to stop the dangerous legal machinery. And it works pretty well as the European debate has shown.

And by the way: Novell-MS patent deal is no defense against bad laws

What indemnification? Digital Majority features a nice clarification: Novell-MS patent deal is no defense against bad laws

Old Suse understood that the only solution to solve the softpat mess is lobbying support. Novell gets into dangerous deals which fire heavily back, provided they were not intended to do harm to Linux or Novell's business. I know just another SuSE developer who intents to leave the company.

Patents are for inventions, not for 'innovations'.

The best approach to solve the softpat problem is lobbying against them. The approach was succesful in Europe and is much cheaper than any fishy patent agreement deals.

Maybe we need a different copyright style system for software designs. Patent law is designed for classical big industry needs, the individual inventor is a myth. No, you cannot fix patent law to serve software industry protection demands.

Unfortunately US patent reform lobbyists go fishing red herrings. Novelty, Obviousness... That is not the way to solve the softpat mess. It is a label for a patent examination test, a dogmatic test which has nothing to do with your imagination about what you think is new or obvious. The 'person skilled in the art' is a legal fiction and does not refer to you.

The problem can be solved but don't try to be smart when there is 'prior art' in patent reform. The inconvenient truth is that there is absolute no proof in economical research that the patent system works at all. That is a economist's credibility test. Most high ranking IP economists will admit it. What we further know is that in dynamic service markets patent law causes much harm. So let's talk about scope of patent law. Let's talk about governance of the patent system. Uhh, that hurts our poor patent institutions. The first step for the USA would be the application of a technical contribution test and a reform of the utility test. Then the USA, switched to first to file, could join the European Patent Convention which would help to solve a lot of problems.

I know how to fix the system. All I need is ressources.

Both patents and pirate downloads are driven by greed. It will not stop. A revolt won't help.

It seems to work here in Europe: after a big campaign of small IT businesses and citizens, the European Parliament rejected a proposal for introducing software patents in the EU.

Sure, the "war" is far from over, but we have won each "battle" so far. But I fear that we have a big probability of losing, unless software patents are challenged also in the rest of the world.

So, please, if you live in the USA or in Japan write to your MPs and tell them why sw patents are absurd and should never be granted, you will help yourself and us in Europe too! Don't think it's impossible: try!

More references:

• http://www.ffii.org/
• http://www.nosoftwarepatents.com/

From the (http://swpat.ffii.org/) the following URL has Quotations on Software patents.

http://swpat.ffii.org/vreji/quotes/index.en.html

Very interesting read even Bill Gates seems to come out in favour of abolishing software patents. Of course that was in 1991. I guess he must have done a 180.

Software patents are proved that they are needless and very anticompetitive. They must go. Period.

I decided to post this under EVERY article about software patents, because no matter how good or bad example is, truth usually is that this patent will be never used in it's meant way. Can call me a troll, but after all sharade of Microsoft/Novell deal, after EU/EC fiasco, after all copyright extentions I have enough.

I call for political change in this field. Like it or not, guys, we must fight. And no more arguing that some software patents must be good, otherwise such silly concept would be never put into realisation, right?

And no more buts and "ohhs" and "but lobbies are too strong". I have never seen sysadmins and other IT people marching and protesting about ANY issue. We just wine and cry and when everything is happening in bad way, we all say "I told you so."

Not any more. At least, for me. Let's do it guys. Let's work for a change. You can support fight in Europe (http://swpat.ffii.org/) or you can try to build consensus and inform people in your home. Inform people in polite way about the issue, don't force point of view. Describe what consequences are here for all that.

Well, there's a really simple solution. Ban software patents. We don't have them here in the EU, so I don't care about this pact. On the other hand, it's becoming increasingly difficult to keep it that way, and the argument is always the need to 'harmonise' our patent system with the USA, so you guys in Leftpondia could make our lives a lot easier if you'd spend some time slapping your elected representatives. My MEP is an active member of the FFII. Will you be voting for active EFF supporters tomorrow?