[Fsfe-ie] EFF Project

[Justin Mason]

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I was at LayerOne [1] this weekend, and talked to one of the lawyers
working on this project.

It's a "first step", to demonstrate *existing* cases of patents being used
to shake down other groups.  Once a collection of "chilling effects" [2]
are established, they can move on to more abstract dangers where a
shake-down hasn't yet been attempted, and they can use it as evidence of
the harm the current patent situation causes in their lobbying in the US.

  [1]: http://layerone.info
  [2]: http://www.chillingeffects.org

BTW, I'd say they'd be happy to put a quote on the line for anti-swpat
lobbying in the EU, where things haven't got quite as far yet. ;)

- --j.

Alexandre Dulaunoy writes:
> On Tue, 15 Jun 2004, Ciaran O'Riordan wrote:
> 
> >
> > Ian Clarke <ian at locut.us> writes:
> > > Barry Mahon wrote:
> > > > EFF: The Patent Busting Project (EFF)
> >
> > > > http://www.qlinks.net/items/qlitem1805
> >
> > > Good for those already encumbered by software patents, but no
> > > substitute for not having such patents in the first place.
> >
> > The other problem, as RMS pointed out at his talk, is that it will be very
> > expensive for EFF and it might even be used against us as the patent
> > inflation camp can say "look, the bad ones are being weeded out, the system
> > works!"
> 
> yes, that's true  and the EFF project could be used  as an argument to
> validate the patent system. A  free software developer can't work with
> "software"[1] patent and its related system...
> 
> http://www.philsalin.com/patents.html
> 
> Maybe we should ask the EFF to make the point on the web page.
> 
> [1] computer programs.
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