France To Launch a National Patent Troll

zoobab writes "France is creating a state sponsored patent fund, FranceBrevets, which primary focus will be to sponsor, acquire and license patents in the ICT (read software patents) sector. The patent fund is at the initiative of the minister of Research, Valérie Pécresse, the Ministry of Industry, Energy and digital economy, Eric Besson. The primary target of the fund is to collect licenses on those patents, which is already seen in France as the biggest patent troll of the country. France is also supporting the European Unitary Patent, which is seen by many at the final attempt to validate software patents in Europe."

Comments

Re:Godwin

[ThunderBird89]

I wouldn't really say that, the EU is a long way from becoming anything that resembles the Reich even remotely. And even if it is, minus the racism, is that really such a bad thing? Before Hitler instituted the Endlöhsung, or just the racism thing in general (seeing as Endlöhsung was almost exclusively anti-Jewish/anti-Slavic), the citizens of the Reich were pretty well-off, and their economy was the biggest in the region.

Being the Devil's Advocate here, but I wouldn't mind cameras on the street, an RFID tag in my ID, a visible and effective police force, etc. if it meant my salary/scholarship (depending on who/where I am at the time in question) is, say, triple my current one (just to compare, this semester, my state-funded scholarship was €53.45 or $76.40 per month, enough to cover the dorm fees, but not much else). I'm not doing many illegal things, just a bit of torrenting for series and software, so as long as they lay off the net, I'm okay with a lot of things. They probably don't apply to me anyway.