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Campaign

Join the fight against software patents with the revamped campaign site

There are many problems caused by the enforcement of patents in the software industry, but it is important to first understand how user and developer freedoms are affected. If you don’t know what End Software Patents (ESP) is about, please Read more…

By Panos Alevropoulos, 1 year1 year ago
Campaign

The threat of software patents persists

Read this article in Spanish. At the Free Software Foundation (FSF) we have reported extensively on many issues concerning user freedom. In this article, we will reintroduce a problem that has plagued the free software community for many years: the Read more…

By Panos Alevropoulos, 2 years1 year ago
Opinion

Jarek Duda on software patents

Jarek Duda is a lecturer in Institute of Computer Science and Computational Mathematics of Jagiellonian University. He has education in computer science (PhD), physics (PhD) and mathematics (MSc), focusing mainly on widely understood information theory. He is mainly known from Read more…

By Dana Morgenstein, 5 years2 years ago
Opinion

About Microsoft’s patent licence for .NET core

Because Microsoft has made it part of their core business to extract patent royalties from distributors of free software (particularly on smartphones), I decided to take a look at the patent safety offered by the licence of the parts of Read more…

By Ciaran, 8 years2 years ago
Opinion

US Supreme Court reining in software patents

(For analysis and info links, see the swpat.org wiki page Alice v. CLS Bank.) “Reining in”. It wasn’t easy to find a term that was both accurate and also vague enough to describe what just happened. The US Supreme Court Read more…

By Ciaran, 9 years2 years ago
Opinion

Is Soverain Software a patent troll? Yes

I was reading about the US Supreme Court declining to hear Soverain v. Newegg when I saw someone ask if Soverain Software was a patent troll. I started with Wikipedia’s article on Soverain Software. I’m a big Wikipedia fan, but Read more…

By Ciaran, 9 years2 years ago
Campaign

Help needed documenting events of May 2013

May brought exceptionally good pieces of news for campaigns against software patents, but I’m stuck studying for law exams. If anyone would like to help, it would be great to have better write-ups about these recent events on the ESP Read more…

By Ciaran, 10 years2 years ago
Opinion

What can we ask of the USPTO?

The USPTO is organising roundtables to get suggestions from software developers. Below are my initial thoughts on what changes we can ask for. If you have other suggestions, please contribute to this wiki page: Suggestions for the USPTO in 2013 Read more…

By Ciaran, 10 years2 years ago
Opinion

What’s wrong with the EU unitary patent?

The European Parliament approving the unitary patent is bad because: Patents become a lot cheaper, which means more patents, which means more restrictions and litigation. People can now get one patent that’s valid in 25 countries (the EU minus Spain Read more…

By Ciaran, 10 years2 years ago
Campaign

Good “End Software Patents” video – not by us

There’s a good anti-software-patent video on YouTube (in WebM video format): End Software Patents w/ Alex TabarrokSoftware such as youtube-dl can download this without Javascript:youtube-dl -t “https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xkWPGwfuQcM&webm=1” Despite the name it has no connection to us but it’s a very Read more…

By Ciaran, 10 years2 years ago
Opinion

Stallman: completely shielding software instead of exempting it

Richard Stallman’s latest article on software patents suggests that instead of a law excluding software from patentability, we need a law saying “that developing, distributing, or running a program on generally used computing hardware does not constitute patent infringement.“ This Read more…

By Ciaran, 10 years2 years ago
Opinion

Software patents coming to EU via unitary patent

The unitary patent proposal has been floating about for years, under various names, but it seems to now be getting dangerous. I don’t know all the details of the current situation and I haven’t found a satisfying overview, so I’ll Read more…

By Ciaran, 11 years2 years ago
Opinion

The solution to Posner’s patent problem

Richard Posner, a very influential US judge, has written an article about the current patent system’s problems and their causes. The article provides useful support for many software patent abolition arguments. He unfortunately closes with suggestions which are unhelpful or Read more…

By Ciaran, 11 years2 years ago
News

Brazilian patent office software patent consultation

Brazil’s patent office has launched a consultation about granting software patents. Please join the ESP-Br mailing list and help us: discussao-br (Portuguese). The patent office’s page about the consultation is here: Consulta pública sobre exame de patente implementada por software. Read more…

By Ciaran, 11 years2 years ago
Opinion

“Software patents don’t scale”

Timothy B. Lee and Christina Mulligan have published an good article: The problem with software patents? They don’t scale

By Ciaran, 11 years2 years ago
Campaign

New ESP Australia video plus committee hearing recording

Two exiting recordings from Australia: Ben Sturmfels’ recent presentation: Ending Software Patents in Australia (video) and Audio of the committee hearing on software patents in the House of Representatives Or, to view Ben’s presentation in WebM format via YouTube, first Read more…

By Ciaran, 11 years2 years ago
Case Law

EU court advisors: owning software ideas detrimental to progress

There are no patents involved in the SAS Institute v. World Programing Ltd case, but there’s a very interesting statement from the European Court of Justice’s legal advisors, the Advocates-General: To accept that a functionality of a computer program can Read more…

By Ciaran, 11 years2 years ago
Opinion

Study calculates economic harm from patent trolls

By studying the movements of the stock market, three researchers from Boston University School of Law have found that over the past twenty years patent trolls have cost publicly listed US product developers 500 billion US$, and the rate is Read more…

By Ciaran, 11 years2 years ago
Campaign

ESP Australia presentation recording

Ben Sturmfels of ESP Australia recently gave a talk outlining the problems caused by software patents. A recording is online at:

By Ciaran, 11 years2 years ago
Campaign

Petition This American Life to use Ogg Vorbis

NPR published a really excellent article on patent trolls in the software industry. Great. They then broadcast a radio version on This American Life. Great exposure for the issue, but, it was published in the still-patented MP3 format. Sign FSF’s Read more…

By Ciaran, 11 years2 years ago

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Recent articles
  • Join the fight against software patents with the revamped campaign site 3 November 2021
  • The threat of software patents persists 4 August 2021
  • Jarek Duda on software patents 19 January 2018
  • About Microsoft’s patent licence for .NET core 12 November 2014
  • US Supreme Court reining in software patents 20 June 2014
  • Is Soverain Software a patent troll? Yes 4 April 2014
  • Help needed documenting events of May 2013 23 May 2013
  • What can we ask of the USPTO? 23 January 2013
  • What’s wrong with the EU unitary patent? 12 December 2012
  • Good “End Software Patents” video – not by us 28 November 2012
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