[Fsfe-ie] Ms. Harney on Newstalk 106 tomorrow (Friday)

Éibhear ifso at gibiris.org
Thu Apr 15 15:53:50 CEST 2004


Plagerise, plagerise! Let no one else's work evade your eyes.

Indeed, I liked the reduced verbosity of Ian's wording. Here is another shot
that incorporates it and some other suggestions.

Something tells me that the main focus of the slot will be on the referendum
in June.


Éibhear

== Draft 2
Subject: Software patents stifle invention and place an undue burden on
small and medium enterprises.

Hi,

Perhaps you can bring the following up with the Tanaiste when you are
speaking with her.

On Wednesday of this week, hundreds of software engineers and small business
owners protested in Brussels against the introduction of Software Patents in
the EU. In September the European Parliament made amendments and
clarifications to a proposal to prevent it from legalizing software patents,
yet the European Council's internal working party chose to discard these
amendments.

Does the Irish Presidency recognise the risks to innovation and competition
in the software industry that software patents create, and if so, why
discard the European Parliaments efforts to address these risks?

Some points of information:
1. The view of the United States' Federal Trade Commission
is "that software and Internet patents are impeding
innovation" (FTC report, "To Promote Innovation: The
Proper Balance of Competition and Patent Law and Policy",
http://www.ftc.gov/os/2003/10/innovationrpt.pdf, page 165.
See a summary at http://www.ffii.org.uk/ftc/ftc.html).
2. A policy of allowing software patents benefits the large
companies who hold huge patent portfolios where they are

--    allowed. Ms. Harney's brief, as Minister for Enterprise,
Trade and Employment is to encourage innovation and
invention in Irish businesses.
3. Both the websites of the Progressive Democrats and Ms.
Harney herself are built using populat community
technologies known as "Apache", "PHP", "MySQL" and
"FreeBSD". New development in these types of technologies
would be virtually impossible in a regime of software patents.
4. A regime of software patents make it extremely difficult for
small companies or contractors to implement web sites or
other software applications for clients.

Thanks,

Éibhear
Éibhear Ó hAnluain
IFSO
Ireland.



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