As you may or may not know, on May 25 there's a referendum in Denmark concerning whether to join the European Patent Court.
If the result of the referendum is a no, that means the new unitary patent will not be valid in Denmark.
From a free software perspective this is kind of a no-brainer: Currently, each year about 6,000 EPO patents (of all kinds) are validated in Denmark.
When the unitary patent is introduced, we can expect that number to grow to about 60,000. EPO's practices regarding software patents are very dubious, and we have no idea how the new patent court will view "computer implemented inventions"; but the whole setup is worrying.
I have co-authored an open letter to IT companies which was published on the Danish web magazine Den Fri:
http://www.denfri.dk/2014/03/softwarepatenter-aabent-brev-til-danmarks-virks...
(also available on my own blog, http://www.modspil.dk/itpolitik/softwarepatenter_og_patentdomstol___bent_bre...)
Apart from publishing it there, we have also sent it to all web bureaus in the Aarhus area and plan to send it to all small/medium software companies in Denmark.
We and many others, are also doing other things to get the no, of course.
It's a tall order: At least 30% of eligible voters must vote no for our accession to the patent court to fall. A majority of say 29,9% against 20% of eligible voters would not be enough, and turnout for European elections is traditionally low. Still, we hope the best.
General question: The European Court used to think the setup concerning the new Patent Court is illegal. Do they still think that?
Best Carsten
On 03/04/14 11:34, Carsten Agger wrote:
As you may or may not know, on May 25 there's a referendum in Denmark concerning whether to join the European Patent Court.
If the result of the referendum is a no, that means the new unitary patent will not be valid in Denmark.
From a free software perspective this is kind of a no-brainer: Currently, each year about 6,000 EPO patents (of all kinds) are validated in Denmark.
When the unitary patent is introduced, we can expect that number to grow to about 60,000. EPO's practices regarding software patents are very dubious, and we have no idea how the new patent court will view "computer implemented inventions"; but the whole setup is worrying.
I have co-authored an open letter to IT companies which was published on the Danish web magazine Den Fri:
http://www.denfri.dk/2014/03/softwarepatenter-aabent-brev-til-danmarks-virks...
(also available on my own blog, http://www.modspil.dk/itpolitik/softwarepatenter_og_patentdomstol___bent_bre...)
Apart from publishing it there, we have also sent it to all web bureaus in the Aarhus area and plan to send it to all small/medium software companies in Denmark.
We and many others, are also doing other things to get the no, of course.
thank you very much for your engagement, I hope it will pay out.
Fortunately, on national level, many countries inside the European Union now are aware of the damaging activities of software patents. Unfortunately, this is not yet true for the European Institutions and Lobbyists still try hard to to enforce them in Europe.
Thanks again, Erik
On 04/08/2014 12:39 PM, Erik Albers wrote:
thank you very much for your engagement, I hope it will pay out.
Fortunately, on national level, many countries inside the European Union now are aware of the damaging activities of software patents. Unfortunately, this is not yet true for the European Institutions and Lobbyists still try hard to to enforce them in Europe.
Thanks to you for your feedback. At least we're succeeding in creating genuine awareness about software patents. Winning the referendum is another thing (but let's see - there's some non-FS-related general anti-EU boost too).
Fun story from Denmark:
Hacktivist Christian Panton created a JavaScript client to replace the proprietary, privacy-invading, security-challenged signed Java applet deployed with our national digital signature/SSO.
The proprietary Java applet must have read and write access to your files to run, which is not nice when it's a government-sponsored program that must run on everyone's computers. For that reason, I only ever run it in a virtual machine.
But Panton solved the problem by creating a JavaScript client, something the company behind the signature has been unable to do with 40 million kroner on top of the > 1 billion they spent on the solution itself.
They retaliated by threatening him with PATENT VIOLATIONS:
http://www.version2.dk/artikel/nets-vi-bruger-softwarepatenter-56815
When asked what patents they were talking about, they declined to answer.