As for the community patent

Posted May 15, 2008 19:06 UTC (Thu) by dark (guest, #8483)
In reply to: As for the community patent by coriordan
Parent article: European software patents via treaty?

Thank you, that was interesting. Did you officially represent anyone in 
that meeting?

In your question you said "When I talk to SMEs in the field of software, 
they say they want fewer or no software patents."

Did anyone challenge you on that, or is it accepted data now?

As for the community patent

Posted May 16, 2008 9:12 UTC (Fri) by coriordan (guest, #7544) [Link]

I was representing FSFE, and was at an SME breakfast because FSFE is a member of the CEA-PME
SME Federation.

No one questioned my assertion that SMEs were against software patents.  Indeed, the chair
confirmed it (which surprised me since he was a pro-swpat MEP).

...but maybe he would say he's against software patents but that he supports
computer-implemented inventions.  To have a meaningful discussion about this, you really have
to be able to agree on terminology at the beginning :-/

The best way to do that is to bring a few specific patents and then avoid existing terms
completely by just talking about "this type of patent".  Q&A sessions don't really give you
the opportunity for that.

Still, if we stay quiet, we give the Commission a justification to say that they discussed X
issue and nobody complained about software patents.  So even when we can't make a difference,
it's useful to raise an objection.