Note: This transcript is not a faithful reproduction of Panos’s live talk, but an edited version of his presentation. Many parts were rephrased to correct any inaccuracies and provide a more comfortable reading experience. The video of the original presentation can be found here: https://framatube.org/w/4E282g5j6qrYFQtCGN1iwx Author’s note: This talk was Read more…
Google wants to do what’s best for its own predatory interests, not what’s best for the web.
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 the recent article we posted on the issue of Read more…
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 problem of software patents. In the past, we had several Read more…
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 wiki: Update: There’s also a page for documenting part 2 Read more…
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 good 2 minute video explaining some of the problems of Read more…
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 go to YouTube’s HTML5 page to make sure everything works. Read more…
Ben Sturmfels of ESP Australia recently gave a talk outlining the problems caused by software patents. A recording is online at:
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 petition for the show to be published in Ogg Vorbis Read more…
The folks at unitary-patent.eu have made a video to explain the dangers of this proposal: A presentation about the unitary patent (For further information, see en.swpat.org/wiki/Unitary_patent )
The below letter is ESP’s submission to the USPTO 2010 post-Bilski consultation. The best part of the Bilski decision was that it left the door open for excluding software from the patent system in a future ruling. Instructions about what has to change today are a little more subtle, but we’ve formalised three here which we hope the USPTO will take into account.
Australian residents and nationals, please sign this letter:
For non-Australians: please contact people in Australia to raise awareness of this.
Venture capitalist Brad Feld has mailed a copy of Patent Absurdity to 200 policy setters in the USA (see Who should see Patent Absurdity?). The 200 are influential people in companies, standards groups, academia, and the relevent political committees.
In the coming days, venture capitalist and anti-software patent blogger Brad Feld will post copies of the Bilski film Patent Absurdity to 200 people. End Software Patents is looking for help in building that list of 200 people. We’re looking for the key people in US patent politics, the software Read more…
FSF has just published a film by independent film make Luca Lucarini:
Against the backdrop of of the current Bilski case in the US Supreme Court, the film features a series of interviews explaining the absurdity of software patents and how we got into this mess. Luca and some of the cast from the film kindly agreed to answer here some of the questions you might have about the film. So fire away!
In response to the Israeli Patent Office’s consultation about software patents, free software group Hamakor has submitted a brief (that linked page contains many other good links). Great work Hamakor!
Australia seems to be headed for software patent legislation in 2010. The bad news is that there was a consultation, and we missed it. The good news is that the consultation was just a preliminary step, so if we start organising now, we can still participate fully in the legislative phase. Other good news is that when I discussed software patents with people in Australia six months ago, there was plenty of interest.
To work on the current consultation in Israel, we’ve launched a public mailing list. There’s one for Australia too since there’ll be work to do there very soon, and some others are being set up. Why public?
I need help contacting groups in Israel. With a February deadline, the Israeli patent office is asking if it should grant software patents. To help, join this mailing list: israel-public-discuss@endsoftwarepatents.org. As usual, the small businesses, individual programmers, and software user groups don’t seem to have noticed this consultation. This is common in public consultations – but you can bet the lawyers groups and the multinationals are aware and working on their submissions. So I need help with informing people in Israel now so they have some time to get prepare submissions. More info below.
There were 38 responses to the consultation in Australia about patentable subject matter. I’ve quickly analysed them all and below are my initial comments. There 400+ pages of writing, so I only skimmed them and I’ve surely made mistakes. There’s a copy of this analysis on the wiki at: http://en.swpat.org/wiki/Australian_consultation_responses_2009 – please add notes there to correct my analysis or to add your own.
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