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Just as important, it's the privileged access to politicians for foreign multinational corporations who are not part of the government's constituency, and supposedly "representative" organisations who actually don't represent *all* of their members - they just represent the few multinational members, who in turn benefit from the government officials *believing* that the organisation represents a broader set of views (e.g. voters and taxpayers). It's the plausible deniability that makes this scenario attractive to the multinationals.

Actually, I'd be very interested to know how much tax those multinationals contribute to the economy compared to the many small locally owned software companies...

I wrote about this leadership opportunity for NZ on the Fair Deal site (an anti-Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement "IP Chapter" effort): http://fairdeal.net.nz/2012/08/nzoss-software-patent-exclusion-vs-tpp

I don't think ST:TNG prior art is nearly as compelling as this 1994 *working prototype* from Knight Ridder: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-1381528/Knight-Ridder-tablet-looks-just-like-iPad-17-YEARS-OLD.html This should really make Apple STFU. I certainly hope it does. Even more, though, I hope we get over this stupid idea of software and process patents. They're a total waste - like $500 billion since 1994: http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1930272

http://computerworld.co.nz/news.nsf/news/xml-patent-saga-ends-with-microsoft-withdrawing-application#31CD015739D5B672CC2578B2000DCF8C

This, amusingly, includes a spin-laden quote from MS NZ's departing corporate affairs manager about the Open Specification Promise, which we all know is no stronger than a fart in a whirlwind.