European Alliance of 2.000.000 SMEs against Software Patents

[Hartmut Pilch <phm@a2e.de>]

An alliance representing a total of 2 million small and medium-sized
businesses in Europe says that software patents, as legalised by the proposed
patent directive, are harmful for SMEs.

The declaration

    http://swpat.ffii.org/papers/eubsa-swpat0202/ceapme0309/index.en.html

has been distributed to the press this morning and explained at the press
conference in the European Parliament.

The European Commission's patent legislators have tried to legitimate their
appraoch by claiming an "economic majority" for themselves, see

         http://swpat.ffii.org/papers/eukonsult00/

Now this claim seems more doubtful than ever.  SMEs are said to account for
about 70% of the investements and jobs in the IT sector.

-- 
Hartmut Pilch, FFII & Eurolinux Alliance              tel. +49-89-18979927
Protecting Innovation against Patent Inflation       http://swpat.ffii.org/
200,000 votes 2000 firms against software patents    http://noepatents.org/

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