Compliance Toolkit

Story: EC pushes on with patent directive

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Mr. Trainee Patent Attorney, you've been badly informed. This is not about the Open Source community. This is about the IP from small firms and small guys versus the IP of the big, mostly overseas, firms.

The proposed directive is about legalising the wrongfull granting of software patents by patent offices. Who have been motivated to grant as many patents, of all sizes and shapes, as possible. In short, a cover up. And a golden investment for big firms that largely own the thousands upon thousands of software patents once those are turned into legally binding software patents. Not to mention an excellent legal weapon to keep the small guys in check. Meaning: unemployed or doing exactly what the big firms want them to do.

One only has to look at the kind of software patents already granted (but not legalized). Many of them are just concepts that will enable lawyers working for big firms with big budgets to drag to court almost every software creator out there today once those software patents are legalized (or as some would say: "formalized"). Open Source or not, doesn't matter. A small example. How many software programs out there have code within them that react to a single mosue click on a certain button on a web page? Almost all of them. That'll make the owner of that particular (concept) software patent very happy once that's "formalized" (or as some would say: legalized).

The commercial reality of today are copyrights. Works well as has been shown by history.
Software patents are only supported by the clueless and the greedy.

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