Patent infringement suit filed against Red Hat (No Lobbyists As Such) [LWN.net]

Patent infringement suit filed against Red Hat (No Lobbyists As Such)

Posted Jun 30, 2006 18:13 UTC (Fri) by smoogen (subscriber, #97)
In reply to: Patent infringement suit filed against Red Hat (No Lobbyists As Such) by JoeBuck
Parent article: Patent infringement suit filed against Red Hat (No Lobbyists As Such)

Well one problem is that the statement is a bit vague...

"an adviser to a key MEP (Member of the European Parliament) told a private FFII mailing list that Red Hats deputy general counsel Mark Webbink lobbied him on the day before the decisive vote and tried, unsuccessfully, to prevent the rejection of the software patent directive by the parliament."

Who is the advisor
Who is the MEP
What exactly was said? was there a misunderstanding (mistranslation etc) about what was being asked?

If Mr Webbink did talk to this MEP, but there was a misunderstanding.. then the answer could be Yes, could be No, or could be Mu depending on what point of view you took from the conversation.

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Patent infringement suit filed against Red Hat (No Lobbyists As Such)

Posted Jun 30, 2006 19:27 UTC (Fri) by riel (subscriber, #3142) [Link]

Wasn't this after the "software patent directive" was amended to explicitly exclude software from being patentable?

That is, after the law proposal was changed to make it explicitly impossible to patent software, free software people had an interest in making sure this (changed) directive was passed.

Of course, the European Commission quickly withdrew the whole thing, since the proposal now said the opposite of what they wanted...