[Fsfe-ie] Re: Speech of Brian Crowley MEP at JURI this morning

[David Golden]

On Thursday 21 April 2005 18:10, Ryan Meade wrote:
> Does anybody know a likely source for this claim, contained in Brian
> Crowley's speech:
>
> "Again, if we look, the reality of it is that of the patents that
> have been granted in the European Union, in the 25 member states, and
> in the U.S. over the last ten years, 92% of them have been granted
> for medium-sized enterprises, or ..."
>

Hmph.  A reading of that without context suggest that statistic is for  
patents, not software patents specifically? Nor does it say
how many were granted to SMEs then immediately sold (or cross-licensed 
in the usual tax-on-market-entry) to the megacorps.

Nor does it say how many of those SMEs were patent trolls or patent
troll wannabe pure plays (i.e. not producing anything useful, just
patenting everything stupid thing under the sun because they can and 
holding people actually producing stuff to ransom): If anything, firms
consisting of a few patent troll lawyers  and nothing much else are 
likely to be classed as "small to medium" by several metrics.

Best Regards,

David Golden