Danish Referendum on the Unified Patent Court

[Carsten Agger]

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On 01/21/2014 09:04 AM, Matthias Kirschner wrote:
> hi Carsten,
> 
> * Carsten Agger <agger at modspil.dk> [2014-01-16 17:00:33 +0100]:
> 
>> I've been invited to a meeting next Monday, and I think I will ad
>> the support of our local FSFE group on the "NO" side. The
>> reasoning is, once again: We do not want any software patents,
>> and we believe this unified patents may easily become a means for
>> introducing software patents on the European level.
> 
> I am sorry I am late on this. How did it go?
> 
It went fine!

The Danish IT-worker's union PROSA are very keen on getting a "no",
because they're convinced that adopting the Unified Patent Court
without a clear ban on software patents means that software patents
*will* be enforceable throughout the EU, or at least that that's a
very serious risk.

Therefore, they wish to launch a "no" campaign that builds on the
threat of software patents and support to and solidarity with SMEs.

It's sort of a first that software patents becomes a prime issue in
national politics. It's also kind of bewildering to the "yes" side who
hadn't expected this.

So I think the campaign and the ideas behind it look promising.

The referendum doesn't look very promising, though. For the patent
court to be rejected, 30% of those eligible to vote most vote "no" - a
simple majority is not enough. That's very difficult for  a technical
issue like this one.

That
> For the follow-up it might help you to read 
> https://fsfe.org/news/2013/news-20130612-01.en.html and the linked 
> documents. As you can read German also 
> <http://www.bundestag.de/bundestag/ausschuesse17/a06/anhoerungen/archiv/47_Patentierung_von_Computerprogrammen/04_Stellungnahmen/Stellungnahme_Kirschner.pdf>
>
> 
our written statement to the German Parliament.
> 
> Some other background on the German situation is available in my
> blog entry
> https://blogs.fsfe.org/mk/fsfe-meeting-the-fsf-crew-in-boston-2/ (I
> have no clue why the URL is so strange, I converted from the short 
> numbers to longer links some time ago).
> 

Thanks for the links, I'm looking at them now. :-)

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