Ben North ben@redfrontdoor.org writes:
The threat of formalising swpats has not gone away, so I will try to find out (maybe Ciaran would know in fact) what the current status of this EPLA proposal is, and whether there's somewhere we can place our position on the record.
The innovation taskforce is something that's active, Irish and worrying, but I haven't gotten to dig into it yet: http://en.swpat.org/wiki/Ireland#Current_issues
AFAICT, the EPLA has been replaced by the UPLS: http://en.swpat.org/wiki/United_Patent_Litigation_System http://en.swpat.org/wiki/European_Patent_Litigation_Agreement
Same approach: keep the legislation, continue the EPO's practice of granting what it likes, and install a court with no accountability where the judges are chosen in such a way that they happen to come from the sections of the legal community that are pro-swpat and such that they are under the influence of the EPO.
swpat.org is a publicly editable wiki, so if anyone has any good links/info that aren't there already, please add them.
The Bilski case (below) has kept me busy recently, so I'm a little out of the loop on what's happening with UPLS etc.
The EPO's inquiry "EBO G3/08" should be still ongoing (internally) about how to interpret the European Patent Convention's exclusion of software. I remember reading that there would be an oral hearing in Germany in October or November, and people who made submissions can attend but can't say anything - but when I went looking for the date now, I can't find anything.
http://en.swpat.org/wiki/EPO_EBA_referral_G3-08
The EPO's response to the briefs has so far been limited to the publication of a brochure explaining that they don't grant software patents but CIIs :-/ http://www.epo.org/topics/issues/computer-implemented-inventions/software.ht...
There's also the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (in no way limited to counterfeiting!) which is being discussed by the world's richest countries plus a few others: http://en.swpat.org/wiki/Anti-Counterfeiting_Trade_Agreement
This is very secretive, but wikileaks has a copy of one version.
And the Bilski case in the Supreme Court is closing its doors tomorrow for submissions. The Obama Administration chimed in in favour of software patents :-/ IBM told the court that software patents are what made free software thrive! etc. etc. The brief for End Software Patents will be put online shortly and is based on "Bilski brainstorming" plus the legal reasoning, updated, from last year's brief: http://en.swpat.org/wiki/Bilski_brainstorming http://endsoftpatents.org/local--files/news/esp-bilski-final.pdf
Oh, and just something funny for anyone who read this far: http://en.swpat.org/wiki/Microsoft#Gates.27_1991_memo
It's the full text of the memo by Bill Gates from 1991 about how software patents would bring industry to a standstill and be useful for extortion. At the end, Gates says:
"A recent paper from the League for Programming Freedom (available from the Legal department) explains some problems with the way patents are applied to software."
Given the dates, Gates seems to have be recommending this paper by rms :-) http://progfree.org/Patents/against-software-patents.html