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FWD: [petition@eurolinux.org: EuroLinux Congratulates British Telecom for Demonstrating the Absurdity of Software Patents]
- To: debate@fitug.de
- Subject: FWD: [petition@eurolinux.org: EuroLinux Congratulates British Telecom for Demonstrating the Absurdity of Software Patents]
- From: Patrick Goltzsch <Patrick.Goltzsch@Hanse.de>
- Date: Thu, 22 Jun 2000 14:29:08 +0200
- Comment: This message comes from the debate mailing list.
- Sender: owner-debate@fitug.de
------- Start of forwarded message -------
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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