software patents

[ssam]

if you have been following the software patents in europe story, you may want to do your bit to say thanks to the people who put lots of work in.

There is a poll for the "European of the Year" and Florian Müller of NoSoftwarePatents.com is in it. you can vote online (you dont need to be european).

there are details at http://www.nosoftwarepatents.com/en/m/ev50/vote.html

[newbie2]

if you have been following the software patents in europe story, you may want to do your bit to say thanks to the people who put lots of work in.

There is a poll for the "European of the Year" and Florian Müller of NoSoftwarePatents.com is in it. you can vote online (you dont need to be european).

there are details at http://www.nosoftwarepatents.com/en/m/ev50/vote.html
M$ is everywhere where the politicians can be influenced :razz: ...take a look at the voting page beneath(sponsored by micro$oft) -->http://www.ev50.com/poll/
also i put this on the nosoftwarepatents.com-forum -->

"The company, founded by former Microsoft scientists Nathan Myhrvold and Edward Jung, has acquired thousands of patents in the past few years, according to sources close to the company. Some sources have further narrowed the figure to between 3,000 and 5,000 patents."
"A patent portfolio of thousands is somewhat unusual for a company with around 50 employees. To put it in perspective, the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office in 2004 granted IBM 3,248 patents, the most it issued to any company in the world last year. Matsushita and Canon landed in second place and third place with 1,934 and 1,805 U.S. patents, respectively."
http://news.com.com/Microsoft+alums+amass+thousands+of+patents/2100-1014_3-5929360.html

http://www.nosoftwarepatents.com/en/m/forum/index.html

[raublekick]

I hate patents in most cases, espetially software. A lot of them are really meaningless. Now they're spreading into videogames and it's looking like a sad future.

For example: In We <3 Katamari, the Japanese version got images of the user's controllers on the screen for the 2 Player mode. In this mode two players control one Katamari at the same time, and the on-screen controllers allow players to see what the other is doing. Due to a patent, however, this small feature was not in the U.S. release.

[newbie2]

Florian Müller won, but declined the award:
http://www.aful.org/wws/arc/patents/2005-11/msg00016.html
http://www.nosoftwarepatents.com/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=674
http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=28041
http://www.ev50.com/noflash/lastyear.asp?id=7