OpenForum Europe rejects Perens charges (Register) [LWN.net]

The Register has an open letter from Graham Taylor, Director OpenForum Europe, clarifying OpenForum Europe's position on software patents. "OpenForum Europe's position is that a lack of clarity about the intent and purpose of software patents would be potentially even more damaging to the interests of European software developers. Our focus is to ensure that as much as possible is done to ensure that any patents are carefully granted and not used in anti-competitive ways; in particular they should not be used to prevent the development of Open Source alternatives to proprietary products. It is this respect that we are supporting the positive revisions proposed in Arlene McCarthy's opinion now being considered by the European Parliament for the granting of patents."

to post comments

2001 Register article doubting OpenForum Europe

Posted May 11, 2003 19:03 UTC (Sun) by AdamRichter (guest, #11129) [Link]

At the formation of "Open Forum Europe", The Register ran an unflattering article by John Lettice about the new organization and Graham Taylor on December 12, 2001. Kudos to Mr. Lettice for adding some useful background and analysis rather than just reprinting a press release. Here are some quotations from that article.

Noted Open Source evangelist Eddie Bleasdale of Netproject holds X/Open responsible, alongside "AT&T lawyers," for "opening the spec of Unix so widely that even NT could be called Unix," and points to the hideous mess that Unix descended into in the 90s as reason for serious scepticism about the likely effectiveness of OpenForum.

[...]

These people, as Bleasdale points out and some of their own supporters confirm, do not know a great deal about Linux [...]

[...] [Graham Taylor] apologised profusely for sending out the press release in Microsoft Word format. "I am in the process of being converted," he shamefacedly told The Register.

[...]

So will the veteran influencers succeed in pushing open source on to stardom in the UK (and then in Europe, for that is the plan)? Or will there simply be many conferences and white papers? We'll see, but The Register is not confident. ®

OpenForum Europe rejects Perens charges (Register)

Posted May 13, 2003 15:33 UTC (Tue) by rjw (guest, #10415) [Link]

The first thing that this bunch of jokers need to do to be taken seriously is *require* that all its members put their software patents in a pool with RAND licencing for proprietary software use and free use for free software. Otherwise they represent nothin gbut a bunch of scumbags trying to screw over Europe as badly as they already have the US.

OpenForum Europe rejects Perens charges (Register)

Posted May 13, 2003 16:51 UTC (Tue) by angdraug (subscriber, #7487) [Link]

To me, the more interesting question is not validity of their (OpenForum Europe) position, but rather their right to represent the open source community.

I didn't vote for them. Not to say that I'd rather see someone (FSF) representing free software community instead.

Patent Tribunals

Posted May 14, 2003 10:40 UTC (Wed) by Wol (subscriber, #4433) [Link]

If we ARE going to get lumbered with software patents, I'd like to see a Patent Tribunal launched.

Basically, anybody on the receiving end of a patent infringement suit can refer the patents to the tribunal. The plaintiff has to justify the patent, the defendant has to justify why the patent is invalid or doesn't apply. Both provide a panel of 5 experts that the presiding judge can call upon. And both are liable for their own costs up to this point.

The judge will then examine the claims.

Defence 1: The defendant has prior art for their own process. If this art is trade secret, then the patent is unenforceable but may still be valid. However, if this prior is is published, then it is treated as

Defence 2: Published Prior Art which invalidates the patent. Note that for the purposes of defining prior art, the patent date is deemed to be the date that the relevant bits of the patent were filed, and not the date that the original application was filed!

Defence 3: The patent is an obvious extension of previous publications. In other words, the "invention" is not valid for patenting.

In addition to the nasty in defence 1 (ie the plaintiff's patent can be invalidated by a false claim!), we add a second nasty in that all claims relating to one defendant's process must be heard by the same judge - who after certain guidelines are met can refuse to hear further claims. This prevents the American "sue til they go bust" technique, because once the defendant refers the claim to the tribunal, the plaintiff can't proceed in court until the tribunal case has been heard - and if the judge won't hear it ...

Cheers,
Wol