Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

European Software Patents Vote Now June 30th

Posted by timothy on from the danger-danger dept.

brenno writes "On June 30th the European Parliament will vote about the much feared software patents. Initially this vote was expected in September, but after a committee hearing British Labor Member of European Parliament Arlene McCarthy scheduled this topic to be dealt with next week. This leaves us with virtually no time to explain to parliament members about the dangers (read all about this at the FFII website). The only thing that you can do is to write to your member of parliament telling what you think and how it endangers free software and how odd it is that on one hand Europe was embracing open source and on the other hand they are putting it in danger. Please step in and undertake some action. Read all about it and write your representative."

2 of 38 comments (clear)

  1. Learn and do by ciaran_o_riordan · · Score: 3, Informative

    Europeans, please do something. Phone you MEPs on Monday (or leave a message today and phone again on Monday).

    Patents are going to ruin the software industry by handing even more power to the companies that have vast bank accounts and legal team (i.e. the ones that really don't need this extra power).

    Read about the affects of patents at:
    http://www.softwarepatents.co.uk/

    Read the UK patent office's "consultation on software patents":
    http://www.patent.gov.uk/about/consultations/concl usions.htm

    Examples of bad or missused software patents:
    http://www.base.com/software-patents/examples.html

    Bad EU patents that have already been issued:
    http://swpat.ffii.org/patents/samples/index.en.htm l#pag
    (these aren't really enforcable until software patents become clearly legal)

    A good proposed amendment:
    http://swpat.ffii.org/analysis/epc52/index.en.html
    (tell you MEPs to look at this, we have to unite with a definite proposal. Simply saying "we don't want software patents" doesn't give an MEP much to say)

    Use the phone. Email is easily ignored. You'll often get answering machines so think of a short useful message to leave, mention the proposed amendment and tell them your sending them an email with the details.

    Ciaran O'Riordan

    --
    Expert in software patents or patent law? Contribute to the ESP wiki!
  2. European Software Comment Form by flagboy · · Score: 3, Informative
    If you are a European small business concerned about the effect of softwre patents on your business use the form at this URL
    http://freenetproject.org/eusp/index.php
    to express your concern. This form is maintained by Ian Clarke of Freenet Project. Comments submitted will be passed to MEPs.

    Alex Macfie <alex@cgce.net>