Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

More on the Microsoft v. EU Decision on Software Patents

Posted by CowboyNeal on from the settled-for-now dept.

bollow (a) NoLockIn writes "As pointed out on Groklaw, Microsoft has told the EU's Court of First Instance that "certain of the communications protocols that the Commission requires it to provide are covered by patents or patent applications and that it intends to file, before June 2005, a large number of patent applications." In view of this, Poland's courageous action against software patents is a great relief. There's an online thank-you letter for Poland with already over 10000 signatures."

4 of 445 comments (clear)

  1. European Patent Law by jmcharry · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Unless there has been a change since I had a minor involvement with it, European and international patent law requires that a patent be at least applied for before an invention is put into commercial service. Apparently putting an unpatented invention into commercial service is roughly the equivalent of publishing it. I believe this is different from US patent law.

  2. Re:How about... by IgnoramusMaximus · · Score: 2, Interesting
    My belief in God doesn't effect you in the least, so how about you back off and stop trying to call me mentally damaged?

    You sir are a prime example of what I am talking about. What religion are you? Christian? Muslim? If so, in case you didnt notice a Christian White House is waging a religious crusade on a muslim Arab nation. Who in turn wage Jihad on the USA. Jewish? I am certainly impacted by actions of religious fanatics in Israel as well as Zionists in my own country. Would you care to be more specific because it is without fail a hallmark of nearly every religion to stick its nose into other people's affairs and try to dictate laws for them.

  3. Polish translation request by bollow+(a)+NoLockIn · · Score: 2, Interesting
    Would someone be willing to translate the Thank Poland letter into Polish for me?

    I have a friend who's from Poland, but he's been away from writing anything in Polish for six years, so I think it's probably better if someone else does the translation and I ask my friend only to double-check the translation for accuracy.

    -- Norbert Bollow (contact information here)

    --
    Under construction: swpat politics overview article
  4. Re:Makes you wonder... by johannesg · · Score: 2, Interesting
    The Dutch government has an unhealthy need to support american companies. That's why we are in the JSF project, instead of the Eurofighter, and that's why we were having secret talks with Microsoft about long-term contracts for a quarter of a million government desktops. Personally I would _very much_ prefer that such money would be spent on the local economy, creating European jobs instead of sending ever more money over the atlantic.

    Anyway, I still STRONGLY believe that Microsoft is currently in the process of building up patent legislation around the globe. Once this is in place in the major markets, it will then come out and utterly crush specific open source projects: Apache, Open Office, Mozilla, and Samba, to name just a few likely candidates.

    And as I said before, chances are they will actually leave Linux alone. They will just make sure you won't have any software to run on it...

    The timing of events appears to be fortuitous for people who do not want to see this happen, and bad for Microsoft, but the threat remains real. Meanwhile, Microsoft is on a tight schedule, since eventually Open Source will destroy them. Before that happens they must set their patent attack in motion, limiting themselves to just the US (and other territories that allow software patents) if necessary. We need to hold on until then - once the attack starts we will be safer since the destructive effect of software patents will be far easier to see.