Julian Fitzell <julian at beta4.com> wrote:
> Are there provisions for this sort of thing in any of the treaties or do 
> we just have to start threatening to ignore US software patents until 
> they regain control of their patent system?

I fear you may be too late -- much of the world seems quite happy to
freely copy the intellectual property of other countries, including the
property of Americans.

Anyway, if you are really into patent reform or IP treaties, here are a
few good starting points:

	http://www.ccp14.ac.uk/maths/software-patents/software_patent_links.htm
l
	http://lpf.ai.mit.edu/Patents/patents.html
	http://www.spi.org/primintr.htm
	

If you go on this important jihad, be prepared to disappear from doing
anything else.  Farewell and goodluck!


> Of course, for all I know, all the other countries are just as bad but 
> we only hear about the US cases... <shrug>

Yes, the whole world is still fumbling around out how to deal sensibly
with software.  I won't speculate on why people focus their chitchat on
the world's biggest economy  (oops, I speculated), but you may find the
below site interesting.  It has a sampling of, by their estimate, the
20,000-30,000 software patents that have been issued by the EPO.

	http://swpat.ffii.org/patents/samples/index.en.html

My favorite was the one for conversion between Win95 and WinNT
filenames, but don't rely on my taste.  Take a perusal and find your
very own favorite silly patent!


Michael Rueger <michael at squeakland.org> wrote:
> If only John Edwards was right: Hope is on the way

I know this is OT but I can't resist repeating this.  If you are hoping
for patent reform, then you might want to shy away from candidates whose
funding is mostly from lawyers:

http://www.opensecrets.org/politicians/indus.asp?CID=N00002283&cycle=200
4



Anyway, it sounds like you may have found a good contribution for the
EFF Patent Busting project:

	http://www.eff.org/patent/


Lex