06.09.09
What on Earth is the EPO Doing?
Summary: The EPO seems to be almost promoting or marketing patentability of software
SOFTWARE patents were rejected in Europe, but amid turmoil, the EPO is selling out to corporations. It does not even care about a democracy, nor does it pay attention to Spanish citizens for example.
The EPO continues walking down the wrong path. A new brochure titled “Patents for software?” has just been release by the EPO. Software patents are not legitimate in the EU. So why even produce such a brochure with a question mark as an excuse?
As the president of FFII puts it, “EPO teaches software programmers they have to read and understand 60.000 patents before writing code.” The EPO has some other new additions to its Web site; to quote from this page:
Computer-implemented inventions
* Patentability of computer-implemented inventions at the EPO, module I NEW!
* Patentability of computer-implemented inventions at the EPO, module II NEW!
What on Earth is the EPO doing?
The Pirate Party, which toys with the propaganda meme (and straw man) that the copyright cartel arrogantly calls “pirate”, is opposed to such abusive intellectual monopolies. Perhaps the party is worth supporting and publicly promoting*. From their site:
The Pirate Party has a constructive and reasoned proposal for an alternative to pharmaceutical patents. It would not only solve these problems, but also give more money to pharmaceutical research, while still cutting public spending on medicines in half. This is something we would like to discuss on a European level.
Patents in other areas range from the morally repulsive (like patents on living organisms) through the seriously harmful (patents on software and business methods) to the merely pointless (patents in the mature manufacturing industries).
Europe has all to gain and nothing to lose by abolishing patents outright. If we lead, the rest of the world will eventually follow.
If people don’t stand up and oppose software patents, they too will likely pass. Microsoft pays lobbyists a lot of money to accomplish this goal by corrupting politicians. █
“Value your freedom or you will lose it, teaches history. “Don’t bother us with politics,” respond those who don’t want to learn.”
–Richard Stallman
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* It already has a seat in parliament, which gives it legitimacy as well as endorsement.
