Patent activist starts campaign against Microsoft-sponsored award

(If you have questions on Monday, January 30, please note that I will not
have email access during large parts of the day.  For questions on that day,
please contact the founder of the Truth50.com campaign, whose contact
information is at the bottom.)

ANTI-SOFTWARE PATENT ACTIVIST
STARTS NEW TRUTH50.COM CAMPAIGN,
DEMANDING VERIFICATION OF THE MICROSOFT-SPONSORED
ELECTION OF THE "EUROPEAN OF THE YEAR"

"EU countries put diplomatic pressure on non-EU countries when there are
serious suspicions of election fraud" -- Campaign is part of the transition
from the recent fight over software patents in the EU to the new patent
policy debate started by the European Commission on January 16

Gruet, Switzerland -- January 29, 2006.  The European anti-software patent
movement is getting into gear again. As of today, the initiator of the
ThankPoland campaign, who gave tens of thousands of people a chance to thank
the Polish government for its intervention against software patents in late
2004 and early 2005, is back on the campaigning front. Norbert Bollow
launched www.truth50.com, a Web site on which people can sign a bundle of
open letters (http://www.truth50.com/en/open-letters.html) to European
political leaders and others involved with an EU-related award, including
Microsoft's CEO Steve Ballmer. Truth50 will at a future point in time
deliver those letters along with lists of the names of the people who
signed. The campaign demands a verification or a retaking of the
Microsoft-sponsored public poll in which the "EV50 European of the Year
2005" was elected.

Truth50 claims there were external indications
(http://www.truth50.com/en/plausibility-analysis.html) that a solid majority
of the participants in the poll for the EU-related EV50 awards may have been
mobilized by the anti-software patent movement to vote for Florian Mueller,
the founder of NoSoftwarePatents.com. Mueller was nominated for having
helped to prevent an EU directive on software patents. However, the prime
minister of Luxembourg, Jean-Claude Juncker, received the "European of the
Year" main award. Mueller was handed the "Campaigner of the Year" award,
having beaten the rock stars Bono and Bob Geldof and other celebrities in
his category. At the end of the awards ceremony, Mueller returned his award
trophy as a gesture of protest against "an intransparent process that may
have been unfair and a result that is, based on the information available
from the outside, not plausible".

The Truth50 site shows a chart
(http://www.truth50.com/en/plausibility-analysis.html) according to which
participation in the poll plateaued after the first ten days of the
seven-week voting period, but when NoSoftwarePatents.com published voting
recommendations in 15 languages and emailed its supporters, the total number
of Internet voters roughly doubled within the next eleven days.
Subsequently, some large Web sites such as Slashdot called on people to vote
for Mueller, and the FFII sent emails to about 90,000 registered supporters.
Therefore, Truth50 estimates that 30,000 to more than 50,000 software patent
critics participated in the poll, while the total number of other voters is
estimated to be on the order of 20,000.

The EV50 awards were created in 2001 by the Economist Group's EU-focused
newspaper European Voice, about half of the circulation of which is
distributed to the EU institutions in Brussels. The 2005 edition of the EV50
awards was sponsored by Microsoft, the PR and lobbying firm
Burson-Marsteller, and Novartis. Microsoft gave funding to several
pro-patent initiatives in the EU and is one of Burson-Marsteller's clients.
Burson-Marsteller was also involved in a pro-patent advertising campaign by
SAP in the build-up to the European Parliament's July 6, 2005 vote. Watchdog
organizations such as the Corporate Europe Observatory have complained about
Burson-Marsteller's lobbying tactics
(http://www.corporateeurope.org/lobbycracy/houseofmirrors....).

The EV50 candidates were nominated by a jury, and the ten awards (European
of the Year and nine category awards) were, according to the organizers,
decided by the public. Votes could be submitted with a coupon in the
European Voice newspaper or on the EV50 Web site. The poll was under no
supervision, and the organizers have so far declined to release any
information concerning the poll, including the total number of participants.
The anti-software patent movement now likens the circumstances of that
process to a banana republic, a theme that was popular to criticize the
European Commission and the EU Council for "anti-democratic" decisions
against the will of various parliaments. Truth50 recalls that "EU countries
put diplomatic pressure on non-EU countries when there are serious
suspicions of election fraud" and encourages people to ask the leaders of
the EU institutions as well as other politicians involved, such as the
EV50's official endorser and Belgian prime minister Guy Verhofstadt, to
support the campaign's demands.

Norbert Bollow explained that "it was time to launch a new campaign about a
year after the successful ThankPoland initiative because this is not just
about software patents". The Swiss resident stresses that "awards such as
the EV50 play some role in lobbying, and even if it's not an election for a
political office, it's an election of political significance, so there has
to be a fair process that the EU institutions, which are indirectly involved
in this, can be proud of". Bollow believes that the problem in this case is
not Internet-specific, but "on the Internet we see ever more of those
'popular votes' and there are only two options: you let a jury decide, which
is no problem, or you do a popular vote that meets reasonable standards".

In the light of the EU's new patent policy initiative, Florian Mueller puts
the Truth50 campaign into a broader perspective: "We're not going to let
ourselves be distracted from the new battle over software patents in the EU,
which officially started when the European Commission published a
consultation paper on January 16. But the new debate in Europe must be a
factual discussion, and fair play by everyone is an absolute requirement.
Truth50 points out with which methods the pro-patent lobby appears to be
operating after the defeat it suffered last summer."

Mueller added: "Truth50 asks the right questions and deserves the right
answers. The EV50 winners were determined at a time when Microsoft was
publicly demanding a new EU initiative to legalize software patents, so I
can see why some people wouldn't have wanted our movement to win the EV50
poll. And the EU wants to restart the debate on the European Constitution
soon, so I can see why some people in Brussels wanted Prime Minister Juncker
to win: he was mostly nominated for his support for the Constitution
project. We're talking about the two major failures that hurt the EU more
than anything else in 2005 -- the software patent directive and the
Constitution Treaty --, but they only make things worse when there's a
public poll for the European of the Year, a semi-official award that
involves Europe's political elite, and then the result raises serious
questions."

CONTACT INFORMATION

Norbert Bollow
phone +41 44 972 20 59
email: truth50@bollow.ch