[pp.int.general] Fight Softwarepatents in the U.S. NOW

[Reinier Bakels]

> That said, we - the FFII - need help. In the U.S., the battle against
> Softwarepatents is currently raging. The Supreme Court is going to
> hear the Bilski case soon and will either allow all patents on software
> or put sever limits to them.

The Bilski case is not about software patents, but about a business method 
patent. It has an indirect relation with software: a lower court last year 
adopted a "machine of transformation" test that was found to affect software 
patentability in a negative sense. That decision may be reversed now by the 
Supreme Court of the US.

FFII is an organisation of (mainly) software developers (both closed and 
open source). They share an aversion against patents with PP, but they 
believe that a strong (software) copyright is helpful in the fight against 
software patents, quite contrary to PPs critical position towards copyright!

While FFII - because of its constituency - has always advocated a special 
exception for software patents, imho the Pirate Party movement should 
acknowledge that patents in various other fields are just as problematic: 
biotechnology, climate change, even pharmaceuticals.

I recently heard a representative from a biotechnology firm complain that 
pharmers not always buy seeds from them, but occasionally put the seeds of 
the plants they grow in the gound again, and grow new plants from them - 
just like teenagers who make "illegal" private copies of MP3 files. Put them 
all in jail! Else the shareholder value of firms like Syngenta and Monsanto 
will suffer.

reinier