[Fsfe-ie] Patent letter, new, shorter, V3

Ciaran O'Riordan ciaran at member.fsf.org
Tue Jan 25 13:46:44 CET 2005


"Malcolm Tyrrell" writes:

> emphasis should not be on the badness of software patents, but rather on
> the failure of the current directive to block them.
...
> The argument that "software should not be patentable" is now openly
> accepted by almost all parties (even if they don't really agree).

My reasons for putting the emphasis the other way around are that

(A) I would be surprised if our new batch of reps have done the background
work to understand why software ideas must be unpatentable, and how serious
this is, and therefore may not have the gusto to take the necessary action

(B) I've forgotten how to argue about the directive text.  Having been out
of the loop for a few months, I need to brush up on my articles and "as
such" clauses.  If anyone can draft a nice paragraph or two about the
directive text, or rip such a paragraph from swpat.ffii.org, then we should
include it, but time is tight and there'll be other letters.


Right now, it seems, we need to persuade either our rep on the Coucil to
make this a B-item (who's that?), or persuade our MEP in JURI (Brian
Crowley) to ask parliamnt to restart the dirctive.

Crowley is a good MEP, he was one of the MEPs that tabled some of FFII's
amendments in September 2003.


> I'm not sure calling the TRIPS angle a "bluff" is productive

Okay, I've relabeled it "one interpretation".

-- 
Ciarán O'Riordan
http://www.compsoc.com/~coriordan/
Free Software in Ireland: http://ifso.ie



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