Re: [Patents] Retroactivity of the law

[Jean-Michel POURE <jm@poure.com>]

> The UK government (I believe acting to comply under an EU  treaty of some
> kind) simply applied the law retroactively without any crisis of
> conscience.

In France recently, the government decided to limit the number of months paid 
to unemployed people retroactively. People appealed and the Governement lost 
in court. Yesterday, the governement announced he would raise new taxes to 
pay for compensation.

By definition, if you change a law retroactively, you have to pay for 
compensation. In the case of patents on software, the compensation is the 
price paid by European Companies in the next 20 years for fake patents.

Looking at the American figures:

2 billion dollars lost in court every year
x 20 years = 40 billion euros

The proposal of the European Commission is going to make the fortune of 
lawyers. Lawyers must be very intelligent to ask Europe to suport such a 
burden for nothing. These lawyers are great chess players.

Now, I realise that the main target of these lawyers are not free software or 
entrepreneurs: it is Europe, they want Europe to pay the bill. How could we 
not realise it before?

Regards,
Jean-Michel Pouré