Re: [Patents] More are coming round to an antiswpat view

[James Heald <j.heald@ucl.ac.uk>]

Christian Beauprez wrote:

> http://australianit.news.com.au/articles/0,7204,9460657%5E15319%5E%5Enbv%5E15306,00.html
>
> Should Australia adopt the US approach, the interoperability of data formats would be made illegal, and the consequences of copyright and patent infringement would be escalated," an ACS spokeswoman said.   
> "The former would effectively exclude open source developers from competing in the software marketplace.   
>
> "The latter would severely limit the ability of small companies, as well as medium and large companies who do not have cross licensing agreements from competing due to the weight of compliance costs."  
>
> The society also the provisions would increase compliance costs for internet service providers, which would affect the activities of both businesses and consumers, and argued that the issue of patents for mere descriptions of business processes - as in the case of software patents - would seriously constrain the conduct of business. 

That's quite a 180-degree change of emphasis!


"THE Australian Computer Society (ACS) has reversed its position of 
support for the draft Australia-US Free Trade Agreement (FTA) 
intellectual property provisions.

In February the ACS had hailed the "FTA breakthrough" and welcomed plans 
to "harmonise" Australian intellectual property law with those in the US.

But yesterday the society flip-flopped, saying it was "concerned about 
the potential negative impact" of the harmonisation of the two 
countries’ IP laws on the Open Source sector.

..

ACS Fellow Roger Clarke said the FTA required a range of unacceptable 
changes to Australian laws, including the extension by 20 years of the 
already very long life of copyright, and allowing for "enormously 
increased power for copyright-owning corporations, enabling them to 
disturb business, attack normal consumer practices, and to suppress 
information".

The society also the provisions would increase compliance costs for 
internet service providers, which would affect the activities of both 
businesses and consumers, and argued that the issue of patents for mere 
descriptions of business processes – as in the case of software patents 
– would seriously constrain the conduct of business.