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EU Central Court Could Validate Software Patents
protoshell writes "'Software patents in Europe could be validated with a central patent court,' warns Richard Stallman in an article published in the Guardian. After the rejection of the software patent directive in 2005, large companies have shifted their lobbying towards the validation of software patents in Europe through a central patent court, which is foreseen with the Unitary Patent project. Even if the European Patent Convention literally excludes software from patents, the European Patent Office and the German courts interpret the exclusion narrowly, which makes software patents valid in the end."
As a citizen of the EU, I know that EU has a lot of flaws. The economic policies, the subsidies, etc... However, so far both the legislative branches and the courts have been simply awesome when it comes to not giving in to the lobbying of multinational companies. The courts have been handing fines for anti-competitive practices, privacy violations, etc. left and right (and yes, for european companies too) and the legislators have destroyed software patents, 3-strikes copyright laws, etc. at every occasion. When we do get horrible laws, they're generally based on "think of the children" or "terrorism".
So yeah... The software patents could be validated but frankly, I'm rather optimistic about this.
I really wonder if what we're seeing here is the complete and utter failure of democracy as a viable form of government. You don't see this kind of stuff in China, where the government is more interested in the whole nation actually advancing, instead of particular people or companies who pay off the right people. What we have in Western democracies is a ridiculous amount of blatant corruption from corporations, and there doesn't seem to be any kind of mechanism to deal with this. In theory, the ballot box is supposed to be a check against corruption, but in practice it simply doesn't work as voters are too stupid and easily swayed to vote for the right candidates, instead of corporate-backed corrupt candidates.