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EU's Unitary Software Patent Challenged At the Belgian Constitutional Court
zoobab writes The Unitary Patent for Europe is being challenged at the Belgian Constitutional Court. One of the plaintiffs, Benjamin Henrion, is a fifteen-year campaigner against software patents in Europe. He says: "The Unitary Patent is the third major attempt to legalize software patents in Europe. The captive European Patent Court will become the Eastern District of Texas when it comes to software patent disputes in Europe. As happened in America, the concentration of power will force up legal costs, punish small European companies, and benefit large patent holders."
This is like reading theology from a religious zealot.
Your premise that building on others' discoveries is "stealing" is patent nonsense, and reverse engineering is a workaround to a problem - not a sin.
You know full fucking well that it'd be easier to further the reach of patents once they are harmonised across the EU, and much harder to eliminate such laws once successfully lobbied for. Since you are a patent lawyer I shall assume you are not stupid, which means you are simply dishonest out of conflict of interest (perhaps because you are a patent lawyer).
Sorry, but other experts then me says the opposite:
http://epla.ffii.org/quotes
Notice that none of those are actually complaining about the establishment of a unitary court or patent, nor are they saying that this legalizes software patents, which it doesn't. Instead, they say that this could "restart the debate" over software patents. In fact, if you only read the fear-mongering, bolded "software patents are fully enforceable across Europe" in the second quote, you might miss the fact that it's saying that pro-software patent groups want that result, not that it actually exists now.
I already think of myself as European. I'm Dutch as well, by the way. There are many more who think the same. There are also quite some people who do not. European integration is already at work for at least half a century. With mixed results, I have to admit... but one thing it did do right; 1945 was the last year there was an active war between European nations (there has been quite an ugly civil war (Yugoslavia) and Russia doesn't seem to play nice, recently. But France, Germany and the U.K. seem to have lost their imperial aspirations). Let's hope people are smart enough to see the benefits and be wary of things that should be better - and keep voting accordingly.