English

Guides for online activism

Five guides for online activism now available in Macedonian and Albanian language

http://metamorphosis.org.mk/publications/onlajn-aktivizam/

New premises of the Metamorphosis Foundation

The Metamorphosis Foundation has a new address: ul. “Apostol Guslarot” 40, Skopje, near the elementary school “Johann Heinrich Pestalozzi”.

Location of the Metamorphosis Foundation

Google Street View faces citizens' reservation in EU

While Google intends to go on mapping localities in Europe through its Street View system, several EU countries continue to show reluctance to this service due to privacy issues.

ЕДРИ | 2.9.2010

French authority wants users to install spyware on their computers

French Internet users could soon be required to install spyware on their PCs tracking down their searching habits and analysing the applications installed on their PCs, in order to prevent "file-sha...

ЕДРИ | 1.9.2010

International team developing open source hospital information system

An international team of software developers specialising in medical systems is working on a hospital information system.

Свет | 31.8.2010

Spain: Andalusia government studying switch to open source desktop

The government of Andalusia, one of Spain's autonomous regions, is preparing to use a complete open source desktop environment.

Свет | 30.8.2010

Azeri bloggers appeal rejected by the Supreme Court

The Azerbaijani Supreme Court took a disturbing decision on 19 August 2010 rejecting the appeal by bloggers and activists Emin Milli and Adnan Hajizade thus upholding the previous decisions taken by t...

Свет | 26.8.2010

Google Testing 'Instant Search' Feature

Ever since Microsoft launched Bing last year, Google has been implementing search features at a fairly rapid pace. According to a number of online reports, the company is currently testing an "instant...

Свет | 25.8.2010

More in: EDRI, World, Macedonia


Petition to stop software patents in Europe

Our petition aims to unify the voices of concerned Europeans, associations and companies, and calls on our politicians in Europe to stop patents on software with legislative clarifications.

The patent system is misused to restrain competition for the economical benefit of a few but fails to promote innovation. A software market environment is better off with no patents on software at all. Healthy competition forces market players to innovate.

European court decisions still accept in many cases the validity of the software patents granted by national patent offices and the European Patent Office (EPO) that is beyond democratic control. They not only continue to grant them, but also to lobby in favor of them. Despite the current deep crisis of the patent system, they are unable to reform and put at risk too many European businesses with their soft granting policy.

On 2005 the Commission appeared to be more supportive to the interests of major international conglomerates than of small and medium sized enterprises from Europe - who are a major driving force behind European innovation. The European Parliament rejected at the end the software patent directive, but has no rights for legislative initiatives.

Studies

A large number of serious scientific and economic studies justify ruling out patents on software.

Copyright for software, but no patents

Software authors are already protected by copyright law, allowing others to innovate in the same space generating healthy competition, but this protection is undermined by patents on software. It is far too easy to violate patents on software whilst being completely unaware of any transgression. Software companies do not use and do not need the patent system to innovate. They must be protected from owners of dubious granted patents.

Litigation instead of innovation

Software patents miss their legitimate purpose. Patents on software favour litigation in detriment of innovation, defeating their democratic justification. They force software producers to spend on bureaucracy, lawsuits, and circumventing dubious granted claims on software what would otherwise be spent on Research and Development. Owners of patents on software, who sometimes doesn't produce software themselves, obtain a means to exert unfair control over the market.
American mistakes

In the USA there are billions of dollars in litigation over software patents each year, and not only between software companies, but also other companies just because they have a web site (this starts to happen in Europe also). This mistake needs to be avoided in Europe.

We urge our legislators

  • to pass national legal clarifications to substantive patent law to rule out any software patent;
  • to invalidate all granted claims on patents that can be infringed by software run on programmable apparatus;
  • to also strive to propagate these rules to the European level, including the European Patent Convention.

Source: Stopsoftwarepatents.eu "Petition to stop software patents in Europe"

 

Deli.cio.us    Digg    reddit    Facebook    StumbleUpon
 

Our Publications

ping_logo

Website Review


sajt_na_denot

Creative Commons iconExcept where otherwise noted, content on this site is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 2.5 License