[Fsfe-uk] Fwd: UK Leading Patents?

[MJ Ray]

Forwarded after a request from Xavi Drudis Ferran <address@hidden>


From: PILCH Hartmut <address@hidden>
Subject: [Patents] UKPTO software piracy watch page 

> a) ensuring they are factually correct/accurate

Not only the EPO but also the UKPTO and some british courts are at fault.
The british patent lobby is the driving force in Brussels, and it is
wearing the hat of the UK government in supporting the EC's drive
for unlimited patentability, see

        EC/BSA Software Patentability Proposal
        http://swpat.ffii.org/vreji/papri/eubsa-swpat0202/

        UKPTO Software Piracy Watch Page
        http://swpat.ffii.org/vreji/gasnu/uk/

It is currently the chief driving force of patent inflation in Europe.
The UK is the only country whose representative has taken sides for patent
inflation, while France has clearly oppposed it.

The "as such" clause needs no clarification.  The UKPTO has proposed a
"clarification" that would make everything under the patentable by
rendering the list of exclusions in art 52(2) moot.

The appositive "as such" is as clear as anything, but it has been abused
by the EPO and the UKPTO as well as british courts.  Any X is also an X as
such and vice versa.  It is grammatical nonsense to distinguish between
"technical X" and "not-as-such X".

You can get a blessing for saving a child's life, even if in order to do
that you killed the dog that was biting the child.  But you won't get a
blessing for killing as such.  Likewise, you can get a patent for
disclosing a teaching about a new physical causality (technical teaching),
even if the patented process runs under program control.  But you won't
get a patent for the program as such.

> b) considering if there are any further statements which I could/should
>    add at this point.

Demand that the UKPTO and the UK patent courts abide by the law and stop
lobbying Europe for a change of this law.

Their lobbying is a scandal given the fact that their consultation, which
itself was based on biased questions and conceived as a patent community
rally, showed a huge overweight in terms of quantity and quality against
the granting of what the UKPTO has been calling "software with a technical
effect" (a deceptive way of saying "everything under the sun").

The UKPTO has completely revealed the full extent of the patent-extremism
behind its gentleman mask by lending support to the Bolkestein/BSA
proposal on 2002-02-28.

We need not only a consultation paper but a group of British activists
that will call up politicians and journalists to stop the PTO's software
pirates from continuing to deceive the public and the government.

- -- 
Hartmut Pilch, FFII & Eurolinux Alliance              tel. +49-89-12789608
Protecting Innovation against Patent Inflation       http://swpat.ffii.org/
100,000 signatures against software patents      http://www.noepatents.org/