FYI
--arky
--- Raj Mathur raju@linux-delhi.org wrote:
To: ilugd@lists.linux-delhi.org, linux-india-general@lists.sourceforge.net From: Raj Mathur raju@linux-delhi.org Subject: [LIG] (fwd) EU software patents: please express gratitude to Poland Date: Sun, 26 Dec 2004 21:21:08 +0530
[Time we too had a look at India's software patent strategy too. Does anyone have detailed information on the new patent bill that is to be tabled in Parliament? What's it's take on software patents? -- Raju]
This is an RFC 1153 digest. (1 message)
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MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Message-Id: 200412261302.iBQD2BRg012035@mail.mysql.com From: "Florian Mueller" florian.mueller@nosoftwarepatents.com Sender: info-gnu-bounces+raju=linux-delhi.org@gnu.org To: info-gnu@gnu.org Subject: EU software patents: please express gratitude to Poland Date: Sun, 26 Dec 2004 14:02:24 +0100
Please take a minute to visit http://thankpoland.info and express your gratitude to the Polish government for its courageous last-minute intervention in the Council of the European Union against software patents on Tuesday (21 Dec).
Poland prevented, at least for the time being, the adoption of a legislative proposal that would legalize software patents in the EU. The respective text looks like it forbids software patents while it actually codifies almost all of the excuses with which the European patent systems (European Patent Office and national patent offices) have been granting software patents for a number of years, contrary to the European Patent Convention. The EU Council could not have turned that proposal into an effective law right away. The Council's "Common Position" would have to go back to the European Parliament for a second reading, in which the majority requirements to make any amendment are however very high.
What the Polish government did was very unusual in EU politics. The EU Council has a two-tiered approach to decision-making, and in the entire history of the EU there has been no more than one case so far in which a political agreement (which was reached on software patents on 18 May 2004) was not turned into a formal decision later. So Poland accepted to pay a diplomatic price for potentially preserving the freedom of software developers. No other country was prepared to do so.
Please also participate in the "Thank you, Poland" campaign if you are not an EU citizen. The EU's legislative process on software patents will have a major impact on what will happen with patent legislations worldwide. If all of the first world is under a US-style software patent regime, emerging markets will follow. This is the chance to rein in the patent system by democratic means, which would also increase the chances of a future patent reform in the US.
Florian
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Florian Mueller Campaign Manager, www.NoSoftwarePatents.com florian.mueller@nosoftwarepatents.com phone +49-8151-651850
(thankpoland.info is independent from NoSoftwarePatents.com)
GNU Announcement mailing list info-gnu@gnu.org http://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/info-gnu
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-- Raj Mathur raju@kandalaya.org http://kandalaya.org/ GPG: 78D4 FC67 367F 40E2 0DD5 0FEF C968 D0EF CC68 D17F It is the mind that moves
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