[Discussioni] [BREVETTI] EFF asks US court to ditch vague patents

[Andrea Glorioso]

Ciao a tutti,

da Register:

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2004/09/21/patents_brief_ambiguous/

EFF asks US court to ditch vague patents
By Lucy Sherriff
Published Tuesday 21st September 2004 10:37 GMT

Anti-software patent campaigners in the  US have taken their fight  to
the courts. The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), Public Knowledge
and the  Consumers Union have joined forces  to file a  "friend of the
court" brief with the US Court of Appeals asking for ambiguous patents
to be declared invalid.

The brief was  filed in  a case called   Phillips v. AWH  Corporation,
following a request   from the appeals court  for  industry and public
opinions on several issues of current patent law, the EFF said.

[...]

The Foundation for a Free  Information Infrastructure (FFII) responded
cautiously to the announcement. It welcomed the action, but emphasised
its position that attacking  bad patents is  not the whole solution. A
spokesman for the  organisation told us:  [...]   "But our concern  is
that this kind of thing could give the impression that we only need to
worry about bad  patents, that if only  patents were awarded according
to the rules, properly examined and checked  for prior art, everything
would  be OK. We don't believe  that to be the  case. We believe, more
fundamentally, that the whole nature of patents  on computer code is a
mistake."

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Ciao,

--
Andrea Glorioso             sama a miu-ft.org         +39 333 820 5723
        .:: Media Innovation Unit - Firenze Tecnologia ::.
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