[Patents] [Freesw] gouvernement 'buy up' patents or copyright (fwd)

[PILCH Hartmut phm@a2e.de]

> That's not an issue. At the moment they start selling a commercial
> product with the patented technology in it, they'll need to license
> the technology from the patent holder.

This is not how the patent system currently works nor is it a good
campaign goal.  So I don't know what it is.

Maybe a set of rules for a GPPL (General Public Patent License)? Which?  
Where can the license text be found?

One possible political demand (campaign goal) could be to define the term
"proprietary software" in patent law and to state that at least
non-proprietary software is not deemed to be an "industrial application"
in patent law.

It would be good to have that in the law, but the goal is to reinstate the
intention the EPC legislators, who had an economic policy rationale when
they demanded that *all* software be exempted from patent claims.  This
rationale is, contrary to what the EPO judges say, still as valid today as
it was in the 50-70s.

At the FFII working group we are currently documenting the legal history
http://swpat.ffii.org/vreji/papri/, and we can now quite surely say that

The EPO (and Federal High Court in Germany) have

(1) radically overturned rules set by the legislator, falsely pretending
    that they lacked clarity 
(2) usurped the authority of making economic policy decisions
(3) based their decisions on ridiculous economic policy reasoning
(4) made their own community richer in the process

It is good to build many layers of protection against software patents,
but there is no reason to concede the patent lobby even a millimeter of
legitimacy.  Which is what some people are really trying to do, when they
propose all kinds of "realistic" compromises with a lobby that has never
offered us a compromise but has often and thoughroughly shown itself to be
untrustworthy.
 
PS: I took all mailing lists except patents@liberte.aful.org out of CC,
because I believe this is the list where English language discussions on
patent issues are most at home.

-phm