Re: [Patents] Large Industry Assocations for McCarthy + Program Claims

[Hartmut Pilch <phm@a2e.de>]

> A little research indicates
>
>       http://www.openforumeurope.org
> and
>
>       http://www.interforum.org
>
> are kind of the same organisations. Don't know what that means.

It would be very good to know.  Some hints on the page:

 Philip Flaxton, CEO of InterForum, added, "The Government has been very
 successful in raising the profile and use of Internet technology in the
 UK over recent years and has set some very challenging targets both
 internally and for the country as a whole."

 "InterForum has worked closely with Government during this time to help
 promote electronic trading in Britain, most notably the partnership with
 UK online for business in funding, managing and delivering the National
 E-Commerce Awards. Through this and other Initiatives such as
 "Modernising Parliament for the Electronic Age", we continue to support
 the Government in its efforts to make the UK the best place in the world for
 e-commerce."

Thus they seem very close to the current UK government. This shouldn't
necessarily mean going along with the UK patent family
(http://swpat.ffii.org/players/uk/) agenda for unlimited patentability.
But it wouldn't be surprising if it did.

I'd like invite Mr. Graham Taylor (cc) to come to our conference

        http://swpat.ffii.org/events/2003/europarl/05

and speak about why program claims and restrictions on interoperability,
as proposed by him in the name of european open source software players,
are beneficial to free software.

Maybe that can help further OpenForumEurope's objective of creating the
impression that "the opensource community is divided on patents".

-- 
Hartmut Pilch, FFII & Eurolinux Alliance              tel. +49-89-12789608
Protecting Innovation against Patent Inflation       http://swpat.ffii.org/
140,000 signatures against software patents          http://noepatents.org/