Potential patent issues

[Russel Winder]

On Wed, 2011-01-19 at 22:37 +0100, Simen kjaeraas wrote:
> Nick Sabalausky <a at a.a> wrote:
> 
> > "retard" <re at tard.com.invalid> wrote in message
> > news:ih7jv4$q49$7 at digitalmars.com...
> >> Wed, 19 Jan 2011 15:44:38 -0500, Nick Sabalausky wrote:
> >>
> >>> "Andrej Mitrovic" <andrej.mitrovich at gmail.com> wrote in message
> >>> news:mailman.724.1295465996.4748.digitalmars-d at puremagic.com...
> >>>> Or pack your bags and move to Europe. :p
> >>>
> >>> I thought Europe was getting software patents?
> >>
> >> It's the US intellectual property mafia pushing software patents to EU
> >> via WIPO, bribes, and extortion.
> >
> > Well yea, but whatever the source of it, I was under the impression that  
> > it
> > was succeeding, or had already succeeded.
> 
> In the EU, it is succeeding at least to an extent. However, many EU members
> do not want software patents, and few European countries outside EU would
> consider it. (about half of Europe is not part of the EU)

The EU Patent Office is trying hard to succumb to the US pressure to
start issuing software patents in the same way USPTO does.  It will be a
disaster if they are allowed to get away with this.  So anyone in the
EU, make sure your MEP (or whatever you label your elected
representative) knows what is going on, knows that this is a "land grab"
by the US corporates to stiffle competition and innovation in EU.

The problem here is ACTA.  The software patents advocates (via USTR)
have managed to infiltrate this global agreement so as to force all
signatories to follow US rules on software patents.  This will force EU
members to do the unthinkable and honour all US software patents.

If this happens we might all as well give up writing software unless we
work for a huge corporation who can play the patent cross-licencing
game.

If the populace doesn't act, they will be shafted.

PS  Read the relevant articles at http://webmink.com/ especially
http://webmink.com/?s=ACTA.  Simon Phipps is 110% correct on the issues
associated with ACTA.

-- 
Russel.
=============================================================================
Dr Russel Winder      t: +44 20 7585 2200   voip: sip:russel.winder at ekiga.net
41 Buckmaster Road    m: +44 7770 465 077   xmpp: russel at russel.org.uk
London SW11 1EN, UK   w: www.russel.org.uk  skype: russel_winder
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