Discussion tomorrow with Eero Bomanson (HELP)

["Ville Oksanen" <ville.oksanen@effi.org>]

Hi,

The Finnish IT-law association is going to hava a discussion tomorrow about
the recent change in FiPTO's policy about SW-patents. The participants are:
Main speaker: Ms. Aura Soininen (a mildly pro SW-patent legal scholar)
Reply 1. Eero Bomanson (FiPTO)
Reply 2. Ville Oksanen (EFFI)

I have to defend EFFI's press release, in which we claimed that the change
was most likely against the Finnish patent law and therefore illegal. The
opponents will argue that A) The change does not really matter, because it
was already possible to get SW patented as a process (the scope of patents
didn't get wider but it's now a bit easier to get legal remidies) B) The
discussion has stuck to technical effect, but that's more or less red
herring because the other criterias are more important. Third argument is
typically "Nokia's innovations are nowadays based on SW, if Nokia can't
patent them, Finnish economy will greatly suffer"

Any suggestions how to counter these arguments? The audience is mostly
IP-lawyers, which means that I'm anyway facing an up-hill battle.. Also, do
you have any questions for Mr Bomanson, I hope that I will be able to get
some answers out of him.

Ville Oksanen
Vice Chairman, Electronic Frontier Finland
www.EFFI.org

PS. About the decisions in the Finnish Parliament, the opinion was written
originally by the Ministry of  Trade and Industry and it wasn't changed at
all during the process (EFFI had a chance to participate, no avail..). The
opinion has many serious mistakes, for example the opinion claims that it's
illegal to make commercial products from FOSS..