Having spent a few years as a lobbyist in the European Parliament during the EU software patents directive, I can tell you that it's very easy to affect the MEPs.

    I learned that they're mostly lost, and the centre-left guy will vote your way just as quickly as the centre-right guy will, so which one you voted for doesn't make a huge difference, but talking to them does. (FWIW, the best party in there is clearly the Greens.) Tell them your concerns and show them your evidence. Showing evidence is essential so they can justify their vote.

    A leaked copy was posted on wikileaks, but they took everything offline due to their financial problems. Does anyone have a copy of the leaked document? Please post it here, or add it to this public wiki:

• http://en.swpat.org/wiki/Anti-Counterfeiting_Trade_Agreement

    The URLs for the relevant wikileaks docs were:

• http://wikileaks.org/wiki/Classified_US%2C_Japan_and_EU_ACTA_trade_agreement_drafts%2C_2009 - where you'd find scans of the document
• http://wikileaks.org/wiki/Talk:Classified_US%2C_Japan_and_EU_ACTA_trade_agreement_drafts%2C_2009 - where people had started to type it up

I haven't found it in archive.org or Google cache. Help sought, thanks.

Why does this matter so much? Once one (now two) countries reject OOXML, it means it cannot become *the* international/European document standard for the public sector.

    I've only just started documenting this on swpat.org. It's a publicly editable wiki, help very welcome :

• C2's VoIP patent

I found one patent they granted that they might be worried about:

• US5276742: Rapid detection of page orientation

(And a poster higher up found this application, which is still in the examination phase: 20090274392: page orientation detection based on selective character recognition.)

That one's just an application. Here's one they granted in 1994:

• US5276742:
      Rapid detection of page orientation

Everyone's going to make this smart ass joke, but there's actually a serious question here.

The USPTO grants patents for utter nonsense. Then, to maintain credibility, they have to abide by the law saying that all those nonsense things are illegal for 20 years.

If someone during a board meeting pointed out that rotating electronically received data communications was patented, the board would be required to decide to stop doing that (or license the patent, but maybe they can't, or maybe the patent holder said no).

Problem is, do you think that protocols using only ideas from before 2008 will be optimal for whatever hardware and software systems we'll be using in 2028?

While you're thinking about that, please support campaigns to abolish software patents.

    The MPEG patent thicket is a prime example of the real problem of software patents. If I want to write a video player, it has to play the formats that people encode videos in. The veto power of patents equates to the right to prohibit me, and everyone, from writing a functional video player. I think I already have pretty good info, but there's loads more of this story to tell. Help really appreciated in documenting this:

• MPEG video formats (including H.264)
• Harm to standards
• HTML5 and video patents

    swpat.org is a publicly editable wiki.

    I've just started a wiki page to document the Novell-MS deals :

• Novell-Microsoft patent deals
• Novell
• Microsoft

    swpat.org is a publicly editable wiki, so if you'd like to contribute to building the case against software patents, dig in!

    I've gathered some info already about patent trolls:

• Patent trolls
• Intellectual Ventures
• Blackboard inc.
• Acacia Research Corporation

    swpat.org is a publicly editable wiki, help welcome.

    Obama's administration submitted a Bilski brief, and Obama's made a statement about wanting to enforce US patents overseas. I'm starting to document the administration's software patent related stances here :

• http://en.swpat.org/wiki/Obama_administration

    swpat.org is a publicly editable wiki, help welcome.

It's good that a portion of his ill-gotten gains will save some lives, but it's tragic that so many more people are dying because access to medicine is blocked by the TRIPS agreement that Gates and friends pushed through.

This donation mustn't be let overshadow the harm. If it's let, then more such harm will be accepted in the future.

(ACTA is the modern TRIPS. We can still stop it.)

No techie I know installs any toolbar...

Same here, but most of my family and friends probably would :-/

I don't see any easy solutions, but maybe one good idea would be for browsers that exist for their users (i.e. free software web-browsers) should consider adding the functionality in an optional way with the best privacy possible.