Unitary Patents and the European Patent Court

[Carsten Agger]

As you may or may not know, on May 25 there's a referendum in Denmark
concerning whether to join the European Patent Court.

If the result of the referendum is a no, that means the new unitary
patent will not be valid in Denmark.

From a free software perspective this is kind of a no-brainer:
Currently, each year about 6,000 EPO patents (of all kinds) are
validated in Denmark.


When the unitary patent is introduced, we can expect that number to grow
to about 60,000. EPO's practices regarding software patents are very
dubious, and we have no idea how the new patent court will view
"computer implemented inventions"; but the whole setup is worrying.

I have co-authored an open letter to IT companies which was published on
the Danish web magazine Den Fri:

http://www.denfri.dk/2014/03/softwarepatenter-aabent-brev-til-danmarks-virksomheder/

(also available on my own blog,
http://www.modspil.dk/itpolitik/softwarepatenter_og_patentdomstol___bent_brev_til_danmarks_it_virksomheder.html)

Apart from publishing it there, we have also sent it to all web bureaus
in the Aarhus area and plan to send it to all small/medium software
companies in Denmark.

We and many others, are also doing other things to get the no, of course.


It's a tall order: At least 30% of eligible voters must vote no for our
accession to the patent court to fall. A majority of say 29,9% against
20% of eligible voters would not be enough, and turnout for European
elections is traditionally low. Still, we hope the best.

General question: The European Court used to think the setup concerning
the new Patent Court is illegal. Do they still think that?

Best
Carsten

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[Erik Albers]

Post by Carsten Agger
As you may or may not know, on May 25 there's a referendum in Denmark
concerning whether to join the European Patent Court.
If the result of the referendum is a no, that means the new unitary
patent will not be valid in Denmark.
Currently, each year about 6,000 EPO patents (of all kinds) are
validated in Denmark.
When the unitary patent is introduced, we can expect that number to grow
to about 60,000. EPO's practices regarding software patents are very
dubious, and we have no idea how the new patent court will view
"computer implemented inventions"; but the whole setup is worrying.
I have co-authored an open letter to IT companies which was published on
http://www.denfri.dk/2014/03/softwarepatenter-aabent-brev-til-danmarks-virksomheder/
(also available on my own blog,
http://www.modspil.dk/itpolitik/softwarepatenter_og_patentdomstol___bent_brev_til_danmarks_it_virksomheder.html)
Apart from publishing it there, we have also sent it to all web bureaus
in the Aarhus area and plan to send it to all small/medium software
companies in Denmark.
We and many others, are also doing other things to get the no, of course.

thank you very much for your engagement, I hope it will pay out.

Fortunately, on national level, many countries inside the European Union now
are aware of the damaging activities of software patents. Unfortunately, this
is not yet true for the European Institutions and Lobbyists still try hard to
to enforce them in Europe.

Thanks again,
Erik
--
Erik Albers | https://fsfe.org/about/albers
Free Software Foundation Europe (FSFE) - Campaigns & Community

Free as in Freedom!

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[Carsten Agger]

Post by Erik Albers
thank you very much for your engagement, I hope it will pay out.
Fortunately, on national level, many countries inside the European Union now
are aware of the damaging activities of software patents. Unfortunately, this
is not yet true for the European Institutions and Lobbyists still try hard to
to enforce them in Europe.

Thanks to you for your feedback. At least we're succeeding in creating
genuine awareness about software patents. Winning the referendum is
another thing (but let's see - there's some non-FS-related general
anti-EU boost too).

Fun story from Denmark:

Hacktivist Christian Panton created a JavaScript client to replace the
proprietary, privacy-invading, security-challenged signed Java applet
deployed with our national digital signature/SSO.

The proprietary Java applet must have read and write access to your
files to run, which is not nice when it's a government-sponsored program
that must run on everyone's computers. For that reason, I only ever run
it in a virtual machine.

But Panton solved the problem by creating a JavaScript client, something
the company behind the signature has been unable to do with 40 million
kroner on top of the > 1 billion they spent on the solution itself.

They retaliated by threatening him with PATENT VIOLATIONS:

http://www.version2.dk/artikel/nets-vi-bruger-softwarepatenter-56815

When asked what patents they were talking about, they declined to answer.



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