FWD: [petition@eurolinux.org: EuroLinux Congratulates British Telecom for Demonstrating the Absurdity of Software Patents]

[Patrick Goltzsch <Patrick.Goltzsch@Hanse.de>]

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Date: Thu, 22 Jun 2000 12:19:35 +0200
From: Petition EuroLinux <petition@eurolinux.org>
Subject: EuroLinux Congratulates British Telecom for
         Demonstrating the Absurdity of Software Patents

                  EuroLinux Congratulates British Telecom
            for Demonstrating the Absurdity of Software Patents
   
                             EuroLinux Alliance
   
                          petition.eurolinux.org
   
   For immediate Release
   
   Metz, Munich and Paris, 21/6/2000  - The Eurolinux Alliance of
   European commercial software publishers and non-profit associations
   has published an open letter and congratulates British Telecom for
   providing the world with a brilliant proof of the absurdity of
   software patents. British Telecom, which owns a US patent on Web
   hyperlinks (US4873662, "Information handling system and terminal
   apparatus therefor") has apparently decided to sue all Internet
   Service Providers in the United States for infringement on their
   patent. To ensure that similar absurd disputes do not happen in Europe
   in the near future, and to save software innovation in Europe,
   EuroLinux urges all businesses and citizens in Europe to sign its
   Campaign for a Software Patent Free Europe which already collected
   6000 signatures in 5 days.
   
   BT's move gives a brilliant overview of the great dangers of Software
   Patents in the information society:

    1. Software patents create tremendous juridical uncertainty, thus
       blocking innovation

    2. Software patents create monopolies on Internet standards, thus
       blocking competition
       
   BT's move also shows the absurdity of the software patent system as it
   stands in the US. BT was granted its patent nearly 15 years ago for a
   software concept which may have seemed new and inventive at the time.
   But such a patent, by being so abstract and general, has actually
   given BT the right to strangle the development of the World Wide Web
   and a lot of related technologies, which owe nothing to the inventive
   effort of BT. Even BT themselves took more than 10 years to discover
   that the scope of their own patent included Hyperlinks on the Web.

[..]
   
   Permanent URL for this PR
   
   http://petition.eurolinux.org/pr/pr2.html
   http://petition.eurolinux.org/pr/pr2.pdf
   
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