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No patents on Software!

The European Parliament wants to vote on the first of September about Software Patents. [update] Normal patents are meant to ’protect’ certain fysical inventions. With software though, you patent the idea (for example the shopping trolley at an e-commerce site) In practice this will make it impossible to write software without violating someone else patent. This will make the development of (non-commercial) open-source software almost impossible.

A SEED is not only against patents on life which only helps the western multinationals against the small farmers in both in the North and in the South. We also don’t like the patents on software, another issue that is related to the WTO talks and at the moment discussed within the neo-liberal brainwashed EU politicians. A software patent is a patent on an invention implemented in software. This issue is extremely controversial. Software patents are not permitted in most countries, and for decades were not permitted in any country. However, they are now permitted in some countries (notably the US and Japan), and the European Union as of 2003 is debating whether or not to permit software patents. In the meantime, the European Patent Office (tasked with the grant of European patents, and separate from the European Union) has decided that it can grant patents on software using a somewhat controversial interpretation of the European Patent Convention.

Also A SEED is using open source software so we are not dependent on Micro$oft and other big software corporations and we don’t have to make them even richer as they are already. So hopefully the current patent plans can be stopped so we and other computer users will be able to choose, also in the future.

More info about Software patents: http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_patent and about patents in general: http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patent You can find examples about the weird consequences of this plan on http://swpat.ffii.org/patents/samples

How you can help end the software patent nightmare: http://swpat.ffii.org/group/todo/index.en.html