Re: Negotiating for using Royalty Free patents



On Mon, 2004-04-12 at 11:18 +0100, jamie wrote:
> On Mon, 2004-04-12 at 09:59, Rui Miguel Seabra wrote:
> > BTW, I see few gnome related sites closed down in protest against
> > software patentes
> > 
> > http://demo.ffii.org/inserturl.php
> > 
> > and there's no news about gnome officially doing something, even though
> > it was asked in the foundation list
> > http://mail.gnome.org/archives/foundation-list/2004-April/msg00000.html
> 
> The European patents thing is mostly FUD put out by FFII. Patenting of
> pure software methods and business methods are not on the agenda (the
> MEPs have made it abundantly clear that they wont allow this ever). The
> only thing that anyone is proposing is allowing software patents in
> embedded devices like the firmware in telecommunication equipment.
> Whilst I would prefer a blanket ban on all software patents, these
> proposals are more or less harmless.

This is a little OT but this is an extremely ill informed statement, so
I'll just correct it quickly and then shut up.

This is no FUD but the FFII. The European Parliament, with the
assistance and advocacy of many participants mostly coordinated by the
FFII, ammended the European Commission's proposal which would allow
software patents into clear limits on patentability.

The Council of Ministers of the EU member-states is now pushing for
unlimited patentability with unlimited enforcement, dropping all MEP
approved ammendments and pushing even further than what the European
Commision wanted.

The EU ammended directive proposal allows patentable inventions that use
software, but the invention must not be the software and made clear
definitions of what is patentable.

Please help fight this cancer and don't fall prey to CEC/Council
misleading statements. They _want_ software patents. They _dropped_ all
clarifying ammendments. They _dropped_ interoperability.

FFII is trying to stop this.

Rui

-- 
+ No matter how much you do, you never do enough -- unknown
+ Whatever you do will be insignificant,
| but it is very important that you do it -- Gandhi
+ So let's do it...?

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