[NTLUG:Discuss] Software patentability - might kill Linux

[Zac Brown]

 I agree, I've been concerned as well TR. I have been receiving the 
Mandrake emails as well, and I'm with Thomas, what can we do to help? 
I'm pretty sure we don't have any say considering we're not EU citizens, 
is there an online petition that maybe the EU Council is looking at?

Zac


>Wow. I'm totally shocked at the LACK of concern in regards to
>the upcoming decision of the European Council to legalize software
>patentability in Europe, on Tuesday May _18_.  If approved, it 
>"would lead to a situation where big companies with large patent 
>portfolios use these to lock their respective markets and prevent
>competition from innovative SMEs", ... Isn't this what M$ is up to
>right now in the US?
>
>Please try to put aside the Fedora vs Red Hat arguments for a few
>minutes and pay attention to what appears to be a very serious 
>threat to Linux. I just got an update email from Mandrake that has
>the following links. If you want to see the full email from 'em, let
>me know.  This affects ALL LINUX, not just Mandrake:
>
>A very readable analysis by François Pellegrini explaining
>the legal and economic issues of software patentability:
>http://www.abul.org/article191.html
>
>A thorough analysis by Jonas Maebe of the difference between
>the three versions of the directive, and why software patents
>are indeed illegal with respect to TRIPS:
>http://www.elis.ugent.be/~jmaebe/swpat/councilanalysis/paper-en.pdf
>
>Positions of the member countries of the European Union:
>http://swpat.ffii.org/akteure/  (add "pt", "ie", "fr",
>"de", "be", "gr", etc to have the positions of the
>member countries)
>
>The page of the FFII giving some directions for actions:
>http://kwiki.ffii.org/?LtrSmePolit0405En
>
>A recent paper published in the Washington Post describing the
>current situation in the United States:
>"Patenting Air or Protecting Property? Information Age Invents a New Problem"
>http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A54548-2003Dec10?language=printer
>
>31 companies sued for using the JPEG image format (the plaintiff
>filed for a patent while recommending the adoption in international
>bodies of a standard including its patented technology):
>http://www.wired.com/news/business/0,1367,63200,00.html%3Ftw%3Dwn_bizhead_1
>
>A US company sues companies of on-line content distribution:
>http://www.e-data.com/
>http://zdnet.com.com/2100-1104_2-5205529.html
>http://zdnet.com.com/2100-1104_2-5144097.html
>
>A well-documented file on the reference site Law.com:
>http://www.law.com/jsp/statearchive.jsp?type=Article&oldid=ZZZV4RVSSPC
>
>=TR=
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