Second Round of EU Patent Fight, Coming Up

An anonymous reader writes "Seems that last fall's victory over EU patent regulations was just round one. The current draft rejects all clarifying amendments made by the European Parliament, allowing direct patentability of computer programs. A net-wide protest is being organized on April 14."

Comments

As has been said before.

[Tsian]

If you would really like to promote change, please take the time to write or call officials. This will almost certainly have a larger impact than any protest restricted to the net.

I mean, obviously these people do not get technology in the way most of us do, otherwise they would not be suggesting such ludicrous laws. As such, take the battle to them on terms they understand.

Re:As has been said before.

[Tsian]

Oh, I think most will now respond to and read e-mail. However, I still think there is a large psychological difference between a full inbox and a large crate of letters.

I would argue that the letters (or large amount of calls) seem more 'real' as they take up quantifiable amounts of time and space.

Re:Software patents are good.. in general

[Zocalo]

Except for a few videogames, Europe isn't exactly the hotbed of new software technology.

Oh, it's not as bad as that. Quite a lot of R&D for software happens in Europe - a lot of Microsoft's UI research is done in Cambridge (England, not Mass.) for example, KDE has a European origin, and Linux itself is from Finland. And there is the small matter of CERN inventing HTTP, the web browser and all... So, technically, for all those people who think that the WWW *is* the Internet, it was actually invented in Europe. ;)