Hi, Foundation for a Free Information Infrastructure is reporting on an issue with a "Joint Statement of the Industry" for Software Patents. They report about it the following way: Some industry / patent lawyers are lobbying again for introducing / strengthening the patentability in Europe. This time the director from "Open Forum Europe", Graham Taylor, does support it in the name of the Open Source Community. http://swpat.ffii.org/papers/eubsa-swpat0202/ipat0304/index.en.html The commentary says that the Statement <quote> asks the legislators to ensure 1. that computer programs are treated as patentable inventions and 2. programs are directly claimable, so that programmers can be sued for publishing a program. Moreover, as means of "protecting opensource software", the signatories ask the European Parliament to ensure that 1. whenever an interface is patented, interoperable software may not be published or used without a license 2. business methods are patentable "only" to the extent that a computer or some other device is involved 3. the European Commission shall publish more papers about the effects of patents on SMEs. </quote> I don't think that there's a significant number of people in OSS that would support such a statement. However, reading the statement, I'm not so sure that FFII did read it properly. I read point 1 of the statement as general support for software patents (as currently practized by the EPO) but with some mitigating preconditions (e.g. preventing trivial patents). This should be objected against IMHO. But I read point 2 as protecting the rights of programmers to reverse engineer interfaces to make interoperable software; not only should the right be protected against copyright claims, also against patents. FFII seems to have read it exactly the opposite way, hmmm ? Point 3 is naïve: Monitoring the impact on small businesses and open software does of course not protect against the adverse effects of patents. Point 4 is unclear to me without further reading. Does anybody know more about this Open Forum Europe? Who is this Graham Taylor? Whose interests is he working for? Does anybody have insight in this case? If it turns out to be as bad as FFII reaction suggests, then there should be reactions of free software supporters and their organizations as well as OSS vendors communicating that this Open Forum Europe is not speaking for us and that we strongly disagree with this move. Regards,
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