US-EU Conference on the CEC/BSA Directive Proposal

[PILCH Hartmut <phm@a2e.de>]

Through

        http://swpat.ffii.org/news/index.en.html
        http://swpat.ffii.org/conferences/2002/ifri06/
        http://cip.umd.ecu/IFRI.htm

you can find the details of a transatlantic research conference about
the european software patentability directive that is being held
within on June 10/11 in Paris.

In this conference, the american initiator is asking fairly critical
questions, while the french side (IFRI.org) seems to be be silent on
about the conference on its website and has even been accused by some
people (from AFUL.org) of playing foul in an attempt to actively
invite the patent movement circles and keep everybody else uninformed
as long as possible, so as to reduce the conference's impact or turn
it into a pro patent propaganda event.

In any case, the opportunity to meet the american economists who have
been studying the issue for the last few years together with leading
people from academia, corporations and politics together at a
dedicated 1 day panel on a 2 day conference about information
innovation matters is unique, and we may not get anything similar soon
again.

The most productive swpat conference I remember was the seminar we
held at Linuxtag 2001.  

        http://swpat.ffii.org/conferences/2001/linuxtag/

With a little luck, this one will be even more interesting.  All the
ingredients are there.  I see a slight possibility of having some
notorious patent trolls (allegedly invited by IFRI) waste a lot of
valuable conference time by boring legal sophistry, but the chances of
that happening seem lower than at most conferences, and it is largely
up to us.  Please come, if you can, and bring interested/ing people
with you.  As far as I hear, although the panel seats are largely
occupied, there may still be a little money available to subsidise
travel expenses of contributors.

-- 
Hartmut Pilch, FFII & Eurolinux Alliance              tel. +49-89-12789608   
Protecting Innovation against Patent Inflation       http://swpat.ffii.org/
115,000 signatures against software patents      http://www.noepatents.org/