[Fsfe-ie] Cowan's Innovation Taskforce and swpats

[Ciaran O'Riordan]

It's reasonable to guess that the innovation taskforce[0] that Brian Cowan has
announced will form an opinion about patents and IT/computers/software.

[0] http://www.ireland.com/home/Taoiseach_establishes_innovation_taskforce/maxi/fast/news/irnews/233165

Does anyone have ideas on who to contact or how to approach this?

Being optimistic, there's a possibility that they'll conclude that software
patents are anti-innovation, like the UK government's independent study did
in 2005:
http://en.swpat.org/wiki/Gowers_Review_of_Intellectual_Property

But being a bit more cautious: the membership is mostly people decision
makers in universities, and they're under huge pressure to be profitable
this year.  So it's possible that royalties and appeasing MS+IBM might take
preference over innovation, freedom, progress, etc.

-- 
Ciarán O'Riordan, +32 487 64 17 54, http://ciaran.compsoc.com

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