[Nottingham] Software Patents

[Martin Garton]

On Tue, 2005-06-28 at 06:45 +0100, Kev wrote:
> I'm also of the opinion that Software Patents are a done deal. The European 
> Parliament is a corrupt organisation, which lacks any real backbone. Just 
> follow the money to find which way the vote will finally go

Maybe you are right, but last time round in the parliament we got some
good amendments in which would have protected interoperability and
offered better protection of SMEs and open source.  Much of that was due
to the efforts of many in our community.   We have not lost yet.

Yes, there will be some form of software patent directive introduced but
with the right amendments if it ends up anything like the Rocard
position then it is better than what we have now. (which technically is
"no software patents" but in practice we have many many software patents
already)

Cheers,
Martin.

PS. Has anyone had a response from any of these:

Phillip Whitehead -Labour
Derek Clark - UK Independence
Robert Kilroy-Silk - Veritas
Roger Helmer - Conservative