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Europeans Still Battling Software Patents

Posted by michael on from the long-haul dept.

rimberg writes "The FFII in the UK is issuing an alert for all supporters to write to their MPs -- this weekend . In September the European Parliament voted for strong restrictions on software patents. But these could be set aside at a meeting of the EU's Competitiveness Council of Ministers on 10 November. The ministers' meeting is to be "prepared" at a meeting of senior patent officials from across Europe even sooner: this Thursday 23 October. Unless they can be convinced otherwise before 10 November, it is believed that UK ministers will push for the Council to adopt a November 2002 draft text, which is even worse than the infamous McCarthy report. The European Parliament's rules for second reading make it very difficult for MEPs to fix a bad text from the Council. The FFII says it desperately need a lot of letters to go out to MPs this weekend to tell the Government how bad the November 2002 draft is. More information at FFII-UK."

2 of 142 comments (clear)

  1. IR35 and now patents by gilesjuk · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Are they trying to kill IT in the UK or what?

    The smaller companies will suffer when patents are phased in and it is these smaller companies that employ workers in the UK. The larger organisations are on the whole moving many jobs to countries such as India.

  2. To all non-Europeans by 4D.uk · · Score: 5, Insightful
    To all non-Europeans

    This may be the best opportunity left for you to prevent software patents in your own country

    The United States Patent Office and the Japanese Patent Office have already achieved their goal of software patents in their own countries. The European Patent Office (supported by all the European national patent offices) is the third partner in the Trilateral Commission, and if it is able to legalize software patents in Europe, each partner will have a very strong position of apparent international legitimacy from which to fight any backlash in their own regions.

    And then, rest of the World, watch out.

    Between them, these 3 regions have a massive amount of economic power, and they will push the rest of the World to follow their lead on the software patent issue. This will be done through the world trade and intellectual property organizations (WTO and WIPO), where the countries on the receiving end of this pressure will probably concede the issue, given that they have more important issues to fight about (such as farming subsidies). Not that they'd necessarily want to fight it, since most governments' advisers on the subject (patent lawyers) are generally strongly in favour of extensions to patentability anyway.

    So, the best remaining opportunity for you to remove or prevent software patenting in your own country may be to help fight it in Europe. If you are not European, you obviously don't have any direct say in our democratic processes, but you could still give secondary support. I guess the best way would be donating your time and money to the Foundation for a Free Information Infrastructure. Here are the links:

    But if you don't think it's right for outsiders to interfere in other countries' political processes, tell that to the BSA (which drafted the original directive proposal), and the US Government (which didn't like the proposed amendments). And when they ignore you, come on and help the good guys.

    P.S. I don't speak for the FFII, I just don't want to see software patents (generally unfair restrictions on people's right to write and distribute their own software) seriously harm computing all around the World.

    P.P.S If you are an EU citizen, make sure your government knows what you want it to do at that November 10th meeting.