Re: [Patents] Discussion tomorrow with Eero Bomanson (HELP)

[Simo Sorce <simo.sorce@xsec.it>]

On Tue, 2003-03-18 at 00:41, Ville Oksanen wrote:
> 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"

Why Nokia should suffer? Nobody can patent software, all have same
opportunities, it is a free market, do they really sustain that free
markets are bad?

Ask them what happen if some other big firm patents something vital for
Nokia and push Nokia slowly out of business!


Or ask them if they like to seem some other Nokia to born in the next
technology revolution or if they want to make that revolution far away
as patents will kill it before it will have any chance to start.

> Any suggestions how to counter these arguments? The audience is mostly
> IP-lawyers,

Then ask them if they are going also to make legal practices patentable!

> which means that I'm anyway facing an up-hill battle..

I personally think battles with legal people are lost at start they
generally simply refuse to accept any argument ... but anyway, ask them
which paper do they have that shows that an SW Patent System is good for
economy! Or are they going to approve such stringent _monopolies_
without even a single favorable economic study?

> 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..

that's very bad ... btw EU calls it FLOSS, Free Libre Open Source
Software.


Simo.

-- 
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