[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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