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Senators See Patent Office Nominee as Possible Ally
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| Senators who have spent years pushing an overhaul of patent law today praised
| President Barack Obamaâs choice to lead the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office,
| suggesting that nominee David Kappos could help jumpstart the stalled
| legislation.
|
| âYou have eminent experience in this field,â Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) told
| Kappos at his confirmation hearing. âIâm very proud of you for accepting this
| position.â
`----
http://legaltimes.typepad.com/blt/2009/07/senators-see-patent-office-nominee-as-possible-ally.html
In tune with the needs of the EU's new pirates
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| The GNU General Public Licence for software was, he says, the main subject of
| conversation between developers who put their work ethics before their own or
| their business' interests.
|
| Before he knew it, Josefsson was part of a movement which claims to be saving
| the world from corporate control. In 2002 he became one of the leading
| opponents of the EU's software patent directive. He co-founded the Swedish
| chapter of the Foundation for a Free Information Infrastructure (FFII) with
| EngstrÃm and, without any knowledge of how to lobby politicians, he
| spearheaded the campaign against the directive.
|
| âWhen the directive was proposed in 2002, I and many others started following
| this from scratch,â he says. âWe were computer programmers, students or
| entrepreneurs, and we knew nothing about how the EU worked.
|
| âIt eventually developed into a grassroots movement equal in strength to the
| business associations and lobby groups you normally find in Brussels, to
| those whose views are normally heard and listened to,â he says.
|
| Patent protest
|
| The movement grew out of the blogosphere â or more correctly, Josefsson says,
| out of the âmailsphere' â and the organising element was no individual or
| organisation, but a classical self-generating political process.
|
| âIt was like seeing a catastrophe about to happen. Imagine a bus about to
| drive into a crowd of people; you want to stop the bus before it happens. We
| didn't have time to launch a proper organisation and we never asked questions
| about how we should do things. We just had to do it.â
|
| By early 2005, more than 400,000 people had signed a petition against the
| software patent directive and later that year it was rejected by the
| Parliament.
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http://www.europeanvoice.com/article/imported/in-tune-with-the-needs-of-the-eu-s-new-pirates/65659.aspx
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