El Sat, Apr 06, 2002 at 06:40:00PM +0100, Martin Keegan deia:
If there's a solid case, I'm well up for doing the paperwork to submit a formal complaint about this issue to the UK Office of Fair Trading, with whom I was in contact by phone yesterday. What needs to be demonstrated is evidence of abuse of a dominant position.
I don't know if there is a solid case (IANAL, and IANAUKC) What I know is that the license only cites (not limiting itself to) two USA patents. First of all we shsould know whether there is an European or UK (in your case) patent. If they aren't the license is void of any force. (USA patents only apply to the USA). The problem is how do you know if there is any patent or not. You can never be 100% sure, I'd say, and then you can't go and tell your comrades: keep calm, no real threat here. That's the problem with patents, legal insecurity and therefore very effective FUD. If you find the patent, then you can file the complaint to the UK Office for Fair Trading (or invalidate the patent on subject matter grounds, maybe). But this would only stop this strike. There'll be more and more. Microsoft can hire many lawyers and patent attorneys.
There are some hints and todos here:
http://swpat.ffii.org/patents/effects/cifs/index.en.html
This document linked from Advogato purports to be a combination of a copyright licence (as far as I can see -- and on closer inspection, 3.1 says so) governing copying the Technical Reference document and a patent licence governing implementation of any system which comes under the claims of the patents mentioned.
I get the same impression. The force of the copyright license is ridiculous. It does no harm. We don't republish the specification and that's it. The probem is the patent license.
So what I tried to say is that the most effective way to fight this is getting rid of software patents, which are just yet illegal in Europe, but are about to be legalised if we don't do something to stop our politicians legalising them. We must also stop the EPO (and I'm told the UKPTO) from issuing patents that don't conform to the law.
Without software patents, those types of licenses are impossible, and nobody could forbid nobody to write, publish or trade in tehir own software.
I heard that UK is the country pushing for software patents in Europe. So your help trying to change that would be more useful (IMHO) than fighting this single license. If you want to help your country fellows in keeping our law system sane, you may want to read
http://swpat.ffii.org/players/uk/index.en.html
Writing to your MEPs and Ministers would be most useful. And there is some care to be taken not too be carreid away by playing with words ("we won't patent software, just methods to calculate things with a general computer", "we won't patent programs as such, just programs run on computers", and things like that)
In practical terms, what this is is the US government forcing Microsoft to disclose technical information relating to one of the essential facilities it controls, and Microsoft doing so in such a way as to discriminate against one of its principal competitors.
Microsoft can't fight this competitor in the current market. Their business model is broken, and they live on inertia. Their only recourse is to change the law so that the market is handled to them by our own lawmakers. That's exactly what they're doing in Europe through the BSA. See
http://swpat.ffii.org/papers/eubsa-swpat0202/index.en.html
xdrudis@tinet.org xdrudis@tinet.org wrote:
I heard that UK is the country pushing for software patents in Europe.
Please, do not start that again. The UK Government, advised by the UKPTO, merely appears trying to export our ambiguous wording. I'm willing to believe that they don't know how much harm this will do. It still needs to be stopped.
I don't think it's fair to say that the UK is pushing for it. I don't think most UK subjects are even aware of the issue right now, not even the ones who ought to know about it.
So your help trying to change that would be more useful (IMHO) than fighting this single license. If you want to help your country fellows in keeping our law system sane, you may want to read
And then you may want to help AFFS organise its campaign against this ill-considered move. http://www.affs.org.uk/ We're looking for new faces to help us on this troublesome issue. Other campaigns are setting up, too.
El Sat, Apr 06, 2002 at 11:00:01PM +0000, MJ Ray deia:
xdrudis@tinet.org xdrudis@tinet.org wrote:
I heard that UK is the country pushing for software patents in Europe.
Please, do not start that again. The UK Government, advised by the UKPTO,
OK, let's leave it here, then.
I don't think it's fair to say that the UK is pushing for it. I don't think most UK subjects are even aware of the issue right now, not even the ones who ought to know about it.
If I understand you say the country is not pushing it, only its government? If that's so, I have no problem to take back "the UK is the country pushing..." and replace it with "the UK government is pushing..." or "some civil servants and/or politicians in the UK government and/or administration are pushing it..." But it is not so uncommon to assume a democratic goverment represents the country even if many people in the country disagree with the government or don't have an opinion. It's sort of the best generalization you can make, but yes, you don't have to make generalisations at all if you're a bit paranoid on language. All generalizations are bad :). Sorry to have let one about UK through.
So your help trying to change that would be more useful (IMHO) than fighting this single license. If you want to help your country fellows in keeping our law system sane, you may want to read
And then you may want to help AFFS organise its campaign against this
Is your "you" the same as my "you" (i.e. Martin) or am I this "you" ? I guess you're tañking to Martin, but if I can help somehow, just tell me.
ill-considered move. http://www.affs.org.uk/ We're looking for new faces to help us on this troublesome issue. Other campaigns are setting up, too.
On Sun, 2002-04-07 at 00:00, MJ Ray wrote:
xdrudis@tinet.org xdrudis@tinet.org wrote:
I heard that UK is the country pushing for software patents in Europe.
Please, do not start that again. The UK Government, advised by the UKPTO, merely appears trying to export our ambiguous wording. I'm willing to believe that they don't know how much harm this will do. It still needs to be stopped. I don't think it's fair to say that the UK is pushing for it. I don't think most UK subjects are even aware of the issue right now, not even the ones who ought to know about it.
A government is chosen by the people who elected it, so theoretically, all those who voted in favour are supporting software patents as advised by the UKPTO ;)
It isn't fair but that's what's happening. The majority of UK people voted for this government.
I bet 5 eur that most of them don't have the foggiest idea about most of what happens though, but that's a problem of transparency in politics and of caring from the people.
MJ, are you from the UK? Who in the UK is raising the issue against software patents (very publicly)?
Hugs, rui
Rui Miguel Silva Seabra rms@1407.org wrote:
It isn't fair but that's what's happening. The majority of UK people voted for this government.
No, only 40.7% of UK voters (and some subjects are not permitted to vote, even if they are adults) voted for this government. It's a long way short of a majority of UK people. They are our elected representatives, though, and we must work with them to make them represent us.
MJ, are you from the UK? Who in the UK is raising the issue against software patents (very publicly)?
At the moment, the only people concerned with it that I am aware of are AFFS http://www.affs.org.uk/ and CDR http://uk.eurorights.org/ -- CDR don't like patents on their issues list yet, and AFFS is still young (expect a call for members Real Soon Now). I don't think this counts as "very publicly" yet. The more people who get involved with these two groups, the sooner it will.
On Sun, 2002-04-07 at 13:01, MJ Ray wrote:
Rui Miguel Silva Seabra rms@1407.org wrote:
It isn't fair but that's what's happening. The majority of UK people voted for this government.
No, only 40.7% of UK voters (and some subjects are not permitted to vote, even if they are adults) voted for this government. It's a long way short of a majority of UK people. They are our elected representatives, though, and we must work with them to make them represent us.
No one voted for the current Portuguese governement :0 However, a post election agreement has managed to put in the government a coalition of a center-right+right wing parties, thus achieving more than 50% of the deputies.
Still, it's our current governement, duely elected (for better or for worse) and the number don't really count that much! :(
I agree with you, and in here
MJ, are you from the UK? Who in the UK is raising the issue against software patents (very publicly)?
At the moment, the only people concerned with it that I am aware of are AFFS http://www.affs.org.uk/ and CDR http://uk.eurorights.org/ -- CDR don't like patents on their issues list yet, and AFFS is still young (expect a call for members Real Soon Now). I don't think this counts as "very publicly" yet. The more people who get involved with these two groups, the sooner it will.
This is very important, but it's going to be harder to win in the UK where there are software patents already than over here.
Hugs, rui
Rui Miguel Silva Seabra rms@1407.org wrote:
No one voted for the current Portuguese governement :0
Ah, but did the deputies in the government parties account for more than 50% of the vote? I'd rather see people voting for the representatives they agree with and *then* a government is formed than the current thing here of people voting for the group they think is most likely to form an acceptable goverment. This is wildly OT, of course.
At the moment, the only people concerned with it that I am aware of are AFFS http://www.affs.org.uk/ and CDR http://uk.eurorights.org/ -- CDR don't like patents on their issues list yet, and AFFS is still young (expect a call for members Real Soon Now). I don't think this counts as "very publicly" yet. The more people who get involved with these two groups, the sooner it will.
This is very important, but it's going to be harder to win in the UK where there are software patents already than over here.
Yes, we have some patents which may apply to software, but they are not enforceable for software here, thanks to various rulings which clarified the situation. This is not guaranteed for the future and I think that exporting that original lack of clarity is a very bad idea.
On Sun, 7 Apr 2002, MJ Ray wrote:
At the moment, the only people concerned with it that I am aware of are AFFS http://www.affs.org.uk/ and CDR http://uk.eurorights.org/ -- CDR don't like patents on their issues list yet, and AFFS is still young (expect a call for
Background:
MJ Ray (the poster to whom I'm replying) is involved with the setup of AFFS as an organisation. CDR, which I myself am involved with, is a less formal organisation, which grew out of the "Free Dmitri Sklyarov" protests.
AFFS has patents on its list of major issues.
I don't know what "CDR don't like patents on their issues list yet" means. I suspect it's a typo where "like" should be "link". CDR certainly hasn't really dealt with patents, and concentrates on copyright and technological protection measures (DMCA, EUCD, etc).
members Real Soon Now). I don't think this counts as "very publicly" yet. The more people who get involved with these two groups, the sooner it will.
I'll say it again: we need a European campaigning organisation for the digital environment, covering the issues of freedom of speech, privacy, crypto policy, intellectual property and open architecture.
Mk