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TRIPs obligations certainly mattered in the EUTRIPs obligations certainly mattered in the EUPosted Sep 29, 2010 15:52 UTC (Wed) by aigarius (subscriber, #7329)In reply to: TRIPs obligations certainly mattered in the EU by FlorianMueller Parent article: FSF says: USPTO should publish guidelines excluding software patents
The statement that there is support for software patents from business is a lie.
While a few large companies do support software patents because they have a lot of them and because their position on software patents is drafted by their patent lawyers (and no their actual management).
However overwhelming majority of IT related businesses and also all non-IT businesses that have looked into the issue are opposed to software patents.
I personally know that because I argued the anti-software patent stance to the Latvian IT association against a few well versed Microsoft lobbyists and in the end all key members of the IT association (except MS) voted to send a strongly worded anti-software patent message to EU Parliament and to Latvian government on behalf of Latvian IT industry.
We have seen the same situation all across EU - a few large players were in favor of software patents and where there was no opposition and no information they just wrote 'industry opinions', but in the cases where both arguments were brought forward and where there was an actual discussion IT community strongly rejected software patents.
In many cases when an association expressed support of software patents it was later discovered that members of these associations not only were not asked of their opinion, they did not even know that their association provided such a position in their name.
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TRIPs obligations certainly mattered in the EU Posted Sep 29, 2010 16:53 UTC (Wed) by FlorianMueller (guest, #32048) [Link] While a few large companies do support software patents because they have a lot of them and because their position on software patents is drafted by their patent lawyers (and no their actual management). It's obvious that experts draft the details. But their positions per se are definitely decided and wholeheartedly supported by senior management. There have been plenty of clear statements by CEOs of pro-software-patent companies. I already contradicted the FFII on internal mailing lists back in 2004/2005 when the claim was made that it's only the in-house patent lawyers of those corporations who support them. It was wrong all the time. Oddly enough, the kinds of people the FFII relied on are not even at the level of a department manager, let alone have ever seen a boardroom from the inside. Aigars, don't believe that fallacy. The senior executives of those companies know very well what intellectual property is about. I personally know that because I argued the anti-software patent stance to the Latvian IT association against a few well versed Microsoft lobbyists and in the end all key members of the IT association (except MS) voted to send a strongly worded anti-software patent message to EU Parliament and to Latvian government on behalf of Latvian IT industry. For lack of knowing the details and circumstances of this, I can't argue with you over your Latvian experience. However, I haven't ever seen anything like this in the largest EU member states, especially not the large ones in the Western part. The failure of the FFII's "Economic Majority" effort was very telling.
TRIPs obligations certainly mattered in the EU Posted Sep 29, 2010 17:41 UTC (Wed) by aigarius (subscriber, #7329) [Link]
Economic Majority did what it was supposed to do. It showed that anti-swpat campaign is not a few crazy lefties with a web site (well, I mean not only) and it provided both numbers and some very useful quotes from real life businesses in a multitude of countries. That information was much more useful in turning heads of politicians that millions of dollars that our opponents floated into Brussels to hire every and all lobbyists available at the time.
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