Digital Majority

1238581288|%e %b %Y, %H:%M %Z — FFII and EPO announce "Binaries-As-Prior-Art": After years of confidential work, the European Patent Office (EPO) and the Foundation for a Free Information Infrastructure (FFII) today announce a radical way to improve software patent quality: Binaries-As-Prior-Art, or BAPA. BAPA combines a database of billions of compiled computer programs ("binaries") with a powerful Cloud search engine that can find any invention in microseconds. (Comments: 0)

1238160980|%e %b %Y, %H:%M %Z — The Conspiracy of Silence: The greatest threat to the global movement to abolish software patents is not the patent trolls or legacy businesses, but the conspiracy of silence from those on "our side" of the debate. (Comments: 4)

1237910689|%e %b %Y, %H:%M %Z — Did Red Hat lobby for, or against software patents in Europe?: In this article we revisit the historical 2005 Software Patent Directive, the most heavily lobbied European law ever, and look at Red Hat's public policy statements regarding this law. Our conclusion: Red Hat Instead, they endorsed the propaganda term "Computer Implemented Invention" and they lobbied for amendments that would legislate for, not against, software patents across Europe where the letter of the law still forbade them. (Comments: 16)

1237740584|%e %b %Y, %H:%M %Z — Who drives the Spanish ICT public policy? The Minister? Sure?: Open letter to the Spanish Minister of Industry demanding him to fire to the vice-minister who seems to drive the current ICT public policy of Spain... for big telecoms and Hollywood entertainment corporations. The man who tries to bring the French 3-strikes against P2P to Spain. Everything against the public opinions expressed by the Minister. What is wrong here, Minister Sebastián? (Comments: 0)

1237542203|%e %b %Y, %H:%M %Z — Red Hat patents SOAP processing over CGI: US Patent 7453593 claims command-line processing by a web server of SOAP requests, resulting in XML responses, from and to a remote client. The HTTP Common Gateway Interface (CGI) operates precisely as described in Claim 1. If you POST a SOAP document and return an XHTML response or a SOAP document, this infringes on Claim 2, since both XHTML and SOAP are XML languages. This patent thus claims to own the processing of SOAP documents by CGI programs. (Comments: 1)

1237280205|%e %b %Y, %H:%M %Z — EPO seeks to validate software patents without the European Parliament: Brussels, 17 March 2009 -- At the highest level of the European Patent Office (EPO), the legality of software patents in Europe is about to be tested. The FFII warns that the European Parliament is being bypassed by allowing a decision with EU-wide implications to be made without its involvement or any real debate. (Comments: 0)

1236273185|%e %b %Y, %H:%M %Z — Czech Presidency recommends you to buy Microsoft Word: The Czech Presidency recommends you to buy Microsoft Word, Excel and Powerpoint in other to read what they are publishing. (Comments: 0)

1234361891|%e %b %Y, %H:%M %Z — "Council seeks to legalise software patents with the Community Patent" says French expert: The Council seeks to legalise software patents with the Community Patent, says Mr Pellegrini, ex-advisor of Michel Rocard, former MEP and rapporteur on the rejected software patent directive. The ultimate goal of this move is to create central caselaw on software patents by a specialized patent court. (Comments: 0)

1233736432|%e %b %Y, %H:%M %Z — AT&T lobbies European Parliament to destroy net neutrality: AT&T is speading some amendments to the Telecom Package in the European Parliament in order to destroy net neutrality, in order to be able to sell different kind of services at different prices. (Comments: 2)

1232819813|%e %b %Y, %H:%M %Z — Obama and the End of Politics: Watching Obama's inaguration, the whole world surely is aware that this is a historic event. But quite why is difficult to understand. It can't simply be the end of Bush, nor the election of a non-white to the most important job in the world. In this article I'll explain what I think is really happening, and what it means for our modern world. We have witnessed a revolution, but one that is far from over. (Comments: 3)

1232038720|%e %b %Y, %H:%M %Z — EU trade polices for pharma-driven changes to Indias IP laws: Shefali Sharma wrote a EED report in which she highlights the role of Trade Agreements for the subversion of democratic decision making over IPR laws. (Comments: 2)

1227014410|%e %b %Y, %H:%M %Z — 53 answers to the revision of the European Interoperability Framework (EIF): The Commission has published on its website the list of stakeholders who contributed to the consultation on the revision of the European Interoperability Framework (EIFv2). Even if the European Interoperability Framework is mostly directed to provide open standards, it can be expected that some large industry players wants to put their patents and restrictions on how citizens can communicate with their governments. (Comments: 1)