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posted by Fnord666 on Saturday November 28 2020, @01:53PM   Printer-friendly
from the while-you-were-out dept.

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


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  • (Score: 3, Interesting) by barbara hudson on Saturday November 28 2020, @11:48PM (5 children)

    by barbara hudson (6443) <barbara.Jane.hudson@icloud.com> on Saturday November 28 2020, @11:48PM (#1081955) Journal
    Who cares if they shut down? When things return to a new normal, new ones will open up. Massive subsidies to restaurants in the meantime are stupid. Most fail within 5 years, pandemic or no pandemic. The same for airlines - there are few that haven't gone bankrupt one or more times pre-pandemic. Let them go broke. Instead of wasting money on supporting dead businesses, support the displaced workers directly.

    This means money, real education (not the shitty job retraining schemes that mostly benefit the scams that spring up in the wake of such schemes and leave people a year later without any real qualifications, just a shitty certificate).

    --
    SoylentNews is social media. Says so right in the slogan. Soylentnews is people, not tech.
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  • (Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday November 29 2020, @10:13AM (2 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday November 29 2020, @10:13AM (#1082005)

    When things return to a new normal, new ones will open up.

    You should learn some reality before spewing bullshit. People need to survive until that time without your dead littering the streets. That means precisely the opposite of what you advocate for. Stopgap measures are not because economic tailspin because invisible hand or something, it's because of external factors. Do you understand "external factors"?

    https://www.bbc.com/worklife/article/20201117-why-reskilling-wont-always-guarantee-you-a-new-job [bbc.com]

    The idea that the precarious position workers find themselves in today could be solved by training is particularly illogical, says Lafer, who has been studying job-training schemes in the US since the 1980s. People are out of work because the pandemic has shuttered huge swathes of the economy, not because of a lack of skills. “If job training was ever going to work it's not now,” he says.

    • (Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Sunday November 29 2020, @05:58PM (1 child)

      by Grishnakh (2831) on Sunday November 29 2020, @05:58PM (#1082073)

      People need to survive until that time without your dead littering the streets

      Right, and that's why they gave out money to people who earned less than $75k (or whatever it was), to keep people from starving. You don't need to keep businesses open, doing zero business, for this: just give money directly to the low-wage workers so they can buy food. The business owners should have saved more money if they wanted to keep the business open; otherwise, they can simply declare bankruptcy and get the same stimulus check their low-pay employees get (assuming they don't make that much; if they made a lot of money (>$100k), then they should have plenty of savings to last through the crisis.

  • (Score: 3, Insightful) by Grishnakh on Sunday November 29 2020, @05:55PM (1 child)

    by Grishnakh (2831) on Sunday November 29 2020, @05:55PM (#1082072)

    I do agree with this one. If businesses are going to be shuttered, it's better to support the displaced workers directly rather than giving handouts to business owners and hoping they'll "trickle it down" to the workers. After things return to normal, people will start new businesses. After all, that's why we have bankruptcy laws: failed businesses can go belly-up without their owners being wrecked financially, and creditors (usually big banks and landlords) will just have to eat the loss, since that's the risk you take when you give a loan to someone.

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday November 29 2020, @11:44PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Sunday November 29 2020, @11:44PM (#1082154)

      Took you less than 24 hours to flip 180 degrees on your previous statement.

      Now the PR dept's line is "Yes we fully intend to bankrupt you all, but you should hope the govt will "support" you till we decide to let "things return to normal"!" Got it.