[Fsfe-ie] SiliconRepublic: ‘Yes’ vote on EU patents vital to software industry -- Irish Software Association

Justin Mason jm at jmason.org
Wed Jun 22 19:07:05 CEST 2005


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James Heald writes:
> http://www.siliconrepublic.com/news/news.nv?storyid=single4986
> 
> Somebody should put these people right.

The BSA seem to be the main mouthpiece for either or both of
MS and the Irish venture capitalist community.

A useful approach might be to get Laura Creighton to talk about how
patents are bad for VCs:
http://www.vrijschrift.org/swpat/030508_1/index.html

This article however talks a lot about MS, which seems odd; perhaps
the press release it was written from came from an MS source?

It would be nice if Silicon Republic had included any kind of dissenting
position in that article, though.

At least we know exactly the FUD that needs to be acted against;

- - 'if the vote fails, Microsoft has a lot more muscle and money to protect
  its patents from imitation, whereas smaller indigenous companies lack
  such resources': if the vote fails, MS patents will remain invalid and
  unenforced, which is a much better situation for competing SMEs than if
  the vote passes.

- - 'restrictions to the protection of patents would open the door to
  low-cost economies which, without patent protection, would be free to
  imitate European products in the hi-tech sectors': no more than now,
  where I've never heard of it being a noticeable problem; plus if the
  patents are not enforced in these non-EU 'low-cost economies', you still
  have no way to enforce them.  It does allow non-EU companies to enforce
  those patents against EU-based competitors, though.

- - 'Cullinan says that Irish MEPs Simon Coveney and Brian Crowley have been
  briefed on the issue and are supportive of a "yes" vote for the Common
  Position.': are they?  I thought they were on *our* side! ;)

- - 'The Common Position does not seek to change what is already happening
  in Europe': yeah right.

- --j.
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