29517641
submission
jan.van.gent writes:
The European Parliament is on the verge to adopt a directive about reform of standards, reform which would introduce FRAND patent licensing terms (fair, reasonable and non-discriminatory), an undefined term which has been a direct attack on the fundamental principles of Free and Open source software. The Business Software Alliance (BSA) has been very active before the European Commission proposed the text on trying to get FRAND terms inside the text.
23285452
submission
protoshell writes:
"Software patents in Europe could be validated with a central patent court", warns Richard Stallman in an article published in the Guardian. After the rejection of the software patent directive in 2005, large companies has shifted their lobbying towards the validation of software patents in Europe through a central patent court, which is foreseen with the Unitary Patent project. Even if the European Patent Convention literally excludes software from patents, the European Patent Office and the German courts interprets the exclusion narrowly, which makes software patents valid at the end.
