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The Foundation for a Free Information Infrastructure has a call for donations against the Unitary Software Patent Trolls after Thursday's disastrous Bundestag vote. On Thursday in Germany, the Bundestag voted on ratification of a proposal for a Unified Patent Court, largely seen as purely a vehicle for introducing software patents into Europe. As software patents in the US were on the way out, introducing them into Europe would bring them back into the US after further "harmonization". Thursday's vote is the result of the software patent lobby changing its strategy in Europe by creating a central patent court outside of the control of the individual member states under which it would make its own rules and avoid democratically elected legislators.
FFII is now calling on its supporting companies and on the open source community to donate to crowdfund a Constitutional Complaint in Karlsruhe. Stopping the UPC in Germany will be enough to kill the UPC for the whole Europe. Politicians willfully ignored the problem that the UPC violates the “Rule of Law” principle, as the EPO still cannot be sued for maladministration, where there are 4 pending complaints in Karlsruhe, which should be issued in early 2021.
Next steps are a vote in the Bundesrat, according to Stjerna’s blogpost
Legal Committee of the Federal Council is currently scheduled for 02/12/2020
Federal Council can therefore be expected to make its final deliberation on the draft legislation in its 998th session on 18/12/2020
–Dr Stjerna blog, Status of the UPCA ratification proceedings in Germany (12/12/2016, latest update on 26/11/2020) https://www.stjerna.de/restart/?lang=en
German government believe that they can ratify before the end of the year, as they consider the UK still a member of the EU till 31st December. The agenda of next votes have been designed on purpose to ratify the UPC before the end of the year.
This plot twist is time-dependent and hangs upon a loophole in Brexit. Thus the time between now and New Year are crucial for preserving the ability to use or develop software in Europe. Again, this is about the uses to which software may be applied, not distribution. Usage is covered by patent law, distribution by copyright law.
The FFII is a pan-European alliance of software companies and independent software developers. It is currently working to neutralize the Unitary Patent project, which is a third attempt to introduce software patents into Europe. The previous two attempts failed, but only because of the joint efforts of thousands of companies to defend against software patents in Europe.
Previously:
(2020) UK Formally Abandons Europe's Unified Patent Court
(2020) Deadly Blow to the Pox of Software Patents in the EU
(2018) Software Patents are Harmful
(2018) A Case for the Total Abolition of Software Patents
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday November 28 2020, @07:15PM (1 child)
I don't think that a multiparty system will result in nothing getting passed because no one agrees on anything. I think there are things that most people do agree on and those things will get passed. Just the issues that few people agree on will struggle more to find an appropriate compromise that most people can get on board with. There is no reason to rush legislation through like there is no tomorrow. We can give everyone time to process the proposed legislature to give their input and find an appropriate compromise before allowing it to pass.
"It does seem that being able to brutally squash internal dissent actually works to make your country economically successful when that's what the leadership wants."
I don't think we should be willing to have our right to dissent crushed in the name of 'economic success'. I also think economic success is possible without having our right to dissent crushed just like it's possible for us to have our right to dissent crushed and still be economically unsuccessful.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday November 28 2020, @09:15PM
We should also avoid the assumption that every law constantly needs changing. Perhaps this is a useful assumption for politicians and legislatures to make because it justifies their continued existence and gives them something to grandstand over but it's not one that should automatically be made.
For instance there are some laws that should be tweaked. Copy protection lengths should be reduced for one thing and there should be other similar tweaks to IP laws in general. Other laws, like the first amendment and section 230 of the CDA, should probably be left alone for the most part.