[Office-commits] r9771 - trunk/campaigns/patents

[sysadmin]

Author: johns
Date: Tue Sep 29 11:02:28 2009
New Revision: 9771

Log:
Version from the lawyers.

Added:
   trunk/campaigns/patents/amicus-intro.mdwn

Added: trunk/campaigns/patents/amicus-intro.mdwn
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+INTEREST OF AMICUS CURIAE
+
+The Free Software Foundation pioneered a movement of information
+exchange that focused on software development but branched out to
+broader fields to great public benefit. [footnote citation to books,
+articles, cases and FSF and a few other websites] ...Apart from work
+of its staff and volunteers in its core activities, its proposed forms
+of public licensing are known world-wide and have been adopted (as
+proposed or with variations) and implemented by millions of people
+creating, adopting and modifying software. [fn: follow up citation to
+some instances and general statistics] The aggregate effect of their
+work, done with reliance on a model of freedom, has promoted science
+and the useful arts, the objects of copyright and patent systems set
+forth in U.S. Constitution, Art 1, sec. 8 (8) ; has limited monopoly
+and restraint of trade, such limitation being an important object of
+federal and state statutes and common law; and has promoted freedom of
+expression, an object of federal and state constitutions.
+
+Software writings distributed through the General Public License
+formats of the Foundation and other free and open source formats,
+inspired in substantial part by the Foundation's work, have become
+staples of data handling and other information systems,
+telecommunications, video and sound files creation and control,
+scientific research, bioinformatics, health care, enterprise
+management and, equally important, have been useful in the study of
+artificial intelligence as a science apart from industrial
+applications. It has also served to mitigate the effects of industrial
+monopoly power and other restraints of trade [footnote citation to the
+story of Microsoft's assessment of the power of open source creativity
+in the so-called 'pumpkin paper' memo revealed in its antitrust case]
+
+The Foundation has been at the center of an emerging and now
+overwhelming new economic and cultural model of sharing creativity and
+a community adopting that model. The Foundation has distinct
+observations of its own and of that community to offer the Court as to
+the interaction of this activity with copyright and patent systems. As
+set out below the patent system has not met the constitutional purpose
+of advancing useful arts in the case of software creation but rather
+has been an obstacle to advancement. Copyright, coupled through the
+General Public License and similar licensing models with voluntary
+open source licensing and sharing, has been beneficial.
+
+While supporting the result sought by Respondent, affordance of the
+judgment of the Federal Circuit Court of Appeals of unpatentability of
+the claimed subject matter of the Bilski et al. patent application,
+this brief shows to the Court a broader view of context and an
+approach to software patenting limitation going beyond the two part
+test derived by the Court of Appeals from this Court's decision in
+Gottschalk v. Benson. It is aligned in part, but only in part, with
+the separate opinion of Judge Mayer.