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NoSoftwarePatents.com Industry Campaign Launches

Posted by timothy on from the one-plus-one-is-mine-all-mine dept.

Halo1 writes "The NoSoftwarePatents.com campaign has officially launched today. It has industry support from 1&1, Red Hat and MySQL AB. The website is already available in 12 EU languages (more to be added soon), and contains a ton of information about the dangers of software patents, including the myths that surround them. Hopefully, more large companies will join this campaign in the future."

3 of 65 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Money by Halo1 · · Score: 2, Interesting
    This far-fetched idea of no software patents
    It's only far-fetched for IP-attorneys that don't think that the economy should be taken into account when deciding about patent policy.
    Large software development houses derive a large percentage of their income from royalties from intellectually-based patents.
    Most software patents are not owned by software developers, but by hardware developers (they got patents in the past for their hardware, so they simply continue that tradition). Anyway, several large companies also lose a lot of money because of software patents. Examples are the companies sponsoring this campaign, but another is e.g. Cisco Systems.

    You're very naive if you think all large companies favor software patents. And you're even more naive if you think that per definition means that Europe will legalise software patents.

    --
    Donate free food here
  2. Can we get a US effort like this started? by borgheron · · Score: 2, Interesting

    All of the anti-patent stuff I'm seeing is from the EU, which is frustating since it does nothing for those of us here in the United States.

    GJC

    --
    Gregory Casamento
    ## Chief Maintainer for GNUstep
  3. Skeptical by ravenspear · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Hopefully, more large companies will join this campaign in the future.

    Since it's precisely large companies that are most benefiting from the abuse of the patent system to obtain frivolous software patents, I doubt this will happen. It won't gain much corporate support outside of open source firms.