Blog – End Software Patents

News

Block the PERA and PREVAIL Act – A major step back for software freedom — Free Software Foundation — Working together for free software

This article was updated Sunday, November 17 to reflect the delay of the bills Both the vote on the PERA Act, as well as the vote on the PREVAIL Act have been delayed. Both bills are not yet off theRead more…

ByGreg Farough,6 months6 monthsago

Campaign

Transcript: The state of software patents in 2022 with Panos Alevropoulos

Note: This transcript is not a faithful reproduction of Panos’s live talk, but an edited version of his presentation. Many parts were rephrased to correct any inaccuracies and provide a more comfortable reading experience. The video of the original presentationRead more…

ByPanos Alevropoulos,2 years2 yearsago

Campaign

Google’s decision to deprecate JPEG-XL emphasizes the need for browser choice and free formats

Google wants to do what’s best for its own predatory interests, not what’s best for the web.

ByGreg Farough,2 years2 yearsago

Campaign

Join the fight against software patents with the revamped campaign site

There are many problems caused by the enforcement of patents in the software industry, but it is important to first understand how user and developer freedoms are affected. If you don’t know what End Software Patents (ESP) is about, pleaseRead more…

ByPanos Alevropoulos,4 years3 yearsago

Campaign

The threat of software patents persists

Read this article in Spanish. At the Free Software Foundation (FSF) we have reported extensively on many issues concerning user freedom. In this article, we will reintroduce a problem that has plagued the free software community for many years: theRead more…

ByPanos Alevropoulos,4 years3 yearsago

Opinion

Jarek Duda on software patents

Jarek Duda is a lecturer in Institute of Computer Science and Computational Mathematics of Jagiellonian University. He has education in computer science (PhD), physics (PhD) and mathematics (MSc), focusing mainly on widely understood information theory. He is mainly known fromRead more…

ByDana Morgenstein,7 years4 yearsago

Opinion

About Microsoft’s patent licence for .NET core

Because Microsoft has made it part of their core business to extract patent royalties from distributors of free software (particularly on smartphones), I decided to take a look at the patent safety offered by the licence of the parts ofRead more…

ByCiaran,11 years4 yearsago

Opinion

US Supreme Court reining in software patents

(For analysis and info links, see the swpat.org wiki page Alice v. CLS Bank.) “Reining in”. It wasn’t easy to find a term that was both accurate and also vague enough to describe what just happened. The US Supreme CourtRead more…

ByCiaran,11 years4 yearsago

Opinion

Is Soverain Software a patent troll? Yes

I was reading about the US Supreme Court declining to hear Soverain v. Newegg when I saw someone ask if Soverain Software was a patent troll. I started with Wikipedia’s article on Soverain Software. I’m a big Wikipedia fan, butRead more…

ByCiaran,11 years4 yearsago

Campaign

Help needed documenting events of May 2013

May brought exceptionally good pieces of news for campaigns against software patents, but I’m stuck studying for law exams. If anyone would like to help, it would be great to have better write-ups about these recent events on the ESPRead more…

ByCiaran,12 years4 yearsago

Opinion

What can we ask of the USPTO?

The USPTO is organising roundtables to get suggestions from software developers. Below are my initial thoughts on what changes we can ask for. If you have other suggestions, please contribute to this wiki page: Suggestions for the USPTO in 2013Read more…

ByCiaran,12 years4 yearsago

Opinion

What’s wrong with the EU unitary patent?

The European Parliament approving the unitary patent is bad because: Patents become a lot cheaper, which means more patents, which means more restrictions and litigation. People can now get one patent that’s valid in 25 countries (the EU minus SpainRead more…

ByCiaran,12 years4 yearsago

Campaign

Good “End Software Patents” video – not by us

There’s a good anti-software-patent video on YouTube (in WebM video format): End Software Patents w/ Alex TabarrokSoftware such as youtube-dl can download this without Javascript:youtube-dl -t “https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xkWPGwfuQcM&webm=1” Despite the name it has no connection to us but it’s a veryRead more…

ByCiaran,12 years4 yearsago

Opinion

Stallman: completely shielding software instead of exempting it

Richard Stallman’s latest article on software patents suggests that instead of a law excluding software from patentability, we need a law saying “that developing, distributing, or running a program on generally used computing hardware does not constitute patent infringement.“ ThisRead more…

ByCiaran,13 years4 yearsago

Opinion

Software patents coming to EU via unitary patent

The unitary patent proposal has been floating about for years, under various names, but it seems to now be getting dangerous. I don’t know all the details of the current situation and I haven’t found a satisfying overview, so I’llRead more…

ByCiaran,13 years4 yearsago

Opinion

The solution to Posner’s patent problem

Richard Posner, a very influential US judge, has written an article about the current patent system’s problems and their causes. The article provides useful support for many software patent abolition arguments. He unfortunately closes with suggestions which are unhelpful orRead more…

ByCiaran,13 years4 yearsago

News

Brazilian patent office software patent consultation

Brazil’s patent office has launched a consultation about granting software patents. Please join the ESP-Br mailing list and help us: discussao-br (Portuguese). The patent office’s page about the consultation is here: Consulta pública sobre exame de patente implementada por software.Read more…

ByCiaran,13 years4 yearsago

Opinion

“Software patents don’t scale”

Timothy B. Lee and Christina Mulligan have published an good article: The problem with software patents? They don’t scale

ByCiaran,13 years4 yearsago

Campaign

New ESP Australia video plus committee hearing recording

Two exiting recordings from Australia: Ben Sturmfels’ recent presentation: Ending Software Patents in Australia (video) and Audio of the committee hearing on software patents in the House of Representatives Or, to view Ben’s presentation in WebM format via YouTube, firstRead more…

ByCiaran,13 years4 yearsago

Case Law

EU court advisors: owning software ideas detrimental to progress

There are no patents involved in the SAS Institute v. World Programing Ltd case, but there’s a very interesting statement from the European Court of Justice’s legal advisors, the Advocates-General: To accept that a functionality of a computer program canRead more…

ByCiaran,13 years4 yearsago