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Enlarged Board
The reason this has now come to a head in Europe is because the Enlarged Board of Appeal of the European Patent Office has been debating whether software patents should be enforceable in EU counties. The battleground is Article 52 of the European Patent Convention, which specifically states what's excluded from patent protection.
Alison Brimelow's referral to the Enlarged Board of Appeal (EU) is discussed again and the US continues to demonstrate the failure of systems with software patents
Free Software Foundation Europe (FSFE) submitted its comments to the European Patent Office (EPO) on the patentability of software, responding to a request of the Enlarged Board of Appeal. In the brief, FSFE explains the harmful nature of software patents for innovation, competition and economy in general.
Donald Knuth, distinguished computer scientist, recipient of the Turing Award, creator of the TeX computer typesetting system, and author of The Art of Computer Programming, which some call the Bible of computer programming, has submitted a letter [PDF] to the European Patent Office for submission to the EPO's Enlarged Board of Appeal considering the question of software patents and whether th
Last year, the European Patent Office (EPO) issued far fewer patents than in 2006. The Munich patent authorities have announced that they approved exactly 54,699 patent applications for commercial protection, 12.9 per cent fewer than in the previous year.
Joe Brockmeier argues in his article that positive campaigning is much more successful in reaching more people, than negative campaigning. He especially criticise the FSF for its "Defective by Design" and "Windows 7 sins" campaigns. I fully agree with Joe's point that it is important to do positive campaigning. This is especially true in Europe.
