Re: [Australia-public-discuss] Write a letter to ACIP?

[Ben Sturmfels]

On Sat, 2010-05-15 at 12:55 +1000, Alex Fraser wrote:
> I agree, the letter would be better if signed by more people. I would
> sign it, and I can ask my boss if he would sign on behalf of the
> company. 

Perhaps we could write a letter explaining the situation as Ciaran
mentioned and accompany it with a petition signed be as many Australian
software people as we can muster.

I drafted the following petition a couple of weeks ago and am happy to
make arrangements to arrange a website to accept responses.

See what you think:

====
Dear Minister,

I understand that patent law is intended to benefit society by
encouraging innovation. I believe though, that allowing software patents
is in fact harmful to society:

1. The software industry has a long history of innovating without
software patents. This shows that the expense of implementing the
software patent system is unnecessary.

2. Small developers are discouraged from innovating because it is not
viable to search software patents nor defend themselves against patent
lawsuits.

3. Due to rapid evolution of the software industry, the 20 year lifetime
of a software patent renders a technique essentially useless to society.

4. The primary benefactors of software patents are the legal industry
and companies who's sole business model is to amass software patents and
sue others (known as "software trolls"). These costs are borne by
software developers and society.

I therefore urge the Australian Government to abolish software patents.

Sincerely,

Name:
Email:
Occupation:
====