Slashdot Mirror
Software Patent Demonstrations Taking Off
feklee writes "The preparations for the
rally against software patents
on Wednesday are running at full speed. Thanks to announcements in DWN, on KDE, in the Register, and
elsewhere, the Online Demo has already
more than 600 participants such as Savannah
and KDE.de. Now, what about your project?"
And flagboy writes "A group of economists from Europe and the U.S. specialising in patent questions have published a letter to members of the European Parliament calling on them to reject the proposal, accompanied by an analytical paper which casts severe doubts on the reasoning behind the directive and on the methods employed by its proponents." Here's the FFII Press Release.
How many cases of patent cases has there really been throughout the years?
Have you heard about the SCO debacle? IBM is suing SCO over patents right now.
If you read the halloween documents, it becomes clear that Microsoft thinks that patents are one of the best ways to stop the Linux spread. When they interviewed users, they thought that IP issues over Linux was something that held them back from Linux adoption.
)9TSS
If you are an European and able to visit Brussels tomorrow, please do so! It doesn't occur much that we Europeans have a good opportunity to get ourselfs heard on these topics.
See here for info. You can visit Brussels by train from many a European country; see here
Hope this all isn't slashdotted before I will plan my own trip this afternoon.
"We can confirm that Debian does *not* ship the version with the trojan horse. Our version predates it." [CA-2002-28]
Now, if there's any big spender listening: It's time for action now!
I have contacts at the EPO. Here is how it works:
1. The EPO is self-financed. They do not receive any money from the EU states.
2. The EPO makes money from patent royalties.
3. The EPO does not have much money.
4. The EPO is ready to accept anything to make money as long as nobody complains.
5. Profit!
The way it works at the EPO is the following: Someone submits something to get a patent.
If it is not completely stupid, a provisional patent is awarded, even if obvious prior art exists!!!
If there has been no negative comments after one year, the patent is awarded.
So I am certain the EU will give the EPO the right to award software patents. The only way to stop this is by periodically checking what provisional patents are awarded and bombard the EPO with negative comments and prior arts.
my 0.02 Euro
Suppose you labor extremely hard to create something, it took so much of your time, might have cost you a marriage, every single penny in your account, and someone comes and swipes it from under your feet what would you do?
Getting a bit emotional, are we? Try to stay with the facts instead of conjuring up heartbreak stories. (Alternatively pursue a career as Hollywood script writer)
Having some country throw patent ideas out is rather lame, and in the long run is only going to hurt those who innovate more than anyone else.
Uh-huh. That't why researchers from MIT and the Federal Reserve Bank in an empirical study concludes that "greater use of software patents is associated with lower R&D intensity. [...] we can reject the argument that software patents have on average increased R&D incentives." Now how does that happen if limiting patentability "hurts innovators more than anyone else"?
Any sufficiently advanced libertarian utopia is indistinguishable from government.
Patents by their very nature always offensive, they prevent others from independently working even if they never harm you or your market in any way and you don't sue them.
Not so - the patent holder has to sue for violation of the patent. They can choose not to, and don't even risk losing the patent if they don't (as I understand it, I ANAL, etc).
If you want a defense then publish, don't patent
Let's say there are two companies, A and B, working in the same field. A patents everything, B publishes everything. Everything is fine, until one day B (perhaps unwittingly) violates one of A's patents. A makes demands that they pay a licence fee or stop. Now B has no choice but to comply - they cannot reply to A by saying "Ah, but *you* are violating *this* patent of ours, so let's call it quits, shall we?".
Publishing your work only protects you from others patenting it, it doesn't protect from violating another's patents, and that's the problem. As long as one company in a given field registers patents, they all must.
It's official. Most of you are morons.
The patent may have expired in the US, but unfortunately it is still in force in Canada, France, Italy, Germany, the United Kingdom and Japan.
But of course there are plenty of technical reasons for switching to PNG as well.
Burn all GIFs!
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