Photo by the European People's Party

Summary: Europe is subjected to abuse and is becoming more abusive with patents. Benjamin Henrion from the FFII highlights some of the latest developments.

EUROPE is under attack. This attack comes both from the inside and the outside. It's a class war, not a geographic/demographic war. The battle for Europe is fought using lobbyists and corruptible politicians who act as proxies for the major benefactors, mostly the world's top businesspeople (not technical people). According to this from Benjamin Henrion, France got greedy and it may let patent holders (or hoarders) more easily extort all the rest. "Think of it as Intellectual Ventures, but run by the French government," writes Benjamin about it in relation to this. A lot of this was seeded by Benjamin's research the other day. Good job there from the FFII. To quote one of the reports it helped generate:

It may seem like we've been particularly tough on the French government lately, but it keeps doing ridiculous things. The latest, as written up by Guillaume Champeau, is that it has built its own giant patent trolling operation, funded with €100 million (Google translation from the original French).

"Europe wants to follow France in creating a european patent troll," notes Benjamin in relation to another article in French (being Belgian he can research further than most can).

In relation to what goes on in the UK-IPO (Peer to Patent Pilot), Benjamin boldly states:

Groklaw/Webbink wants us to read patent claims on Peer2Patent? No thank you, software is not patentable in the UK

And also:

You have to be mentally sick to participate in the Peer 2 Patent exercise

"UK Parliament wants to know if they can withdraw from the Council conclusions on unitary patent," he adds, noting that there is "UK Parliament request for scrutiny about unitary patent" (pointing to this page and this one too). EPO propaganda for its own benefit (profit) is also shown amid a push for some euphemistic thing called "Innovation Union". "We need to do much better at turning our research into new and better services and products if we are to remain competitive on the global marketplace and improve the quality of life in Europe," the page says. At least it does not say patents or imply a causal correlation between patents and innovation. But wait, then Microsoft steps in.

Jan Muehlfeit (a former communist [1, 2]) from Microsoft [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7]) is leaning on European politicians and lying about what Microsoft does in order to promote the agenda of his patent aggressor (he pushes and works for it as part of this "union") while the Commission is collecting feedback as part of the whole "Digital Agenda" push. We need to watch out for patent maximalists in Europe, such as this Windows-based site which quotes Alexandr Vondra (Deputy Prime Minister for EU Affairs, 2007-2010) as saying that: "Too much IPR does not kill innovation; rather the opposite" (where it the evidence?). Separately, Benjamin berates Neelie Kroes, probably for this type of legacy. Those who believe that the Commission is still on Free software's side have not been paying attention in recent years. ⬆