Digital Rights Network

Brussels, London, Berlin, Warsaw, Ljubljana, 4th July 2006 — In an open letter to the EU Commission, six small business associations have called on Commissioners Verheugen and Reding to modify their plans for a task force, designed “to define the future EU policy in ICT”. The proposed task force mainly consists of large IT firms, such as IBM, Cisco, and [...]

In a ruling earlier this year, just published, the European Patent Office reversed a decision to throw out Microsoft’s patent application on “expanded clipboard formats”. The ruling explicitly states that no software is excluded from patentability by virtue of being a computer program. If the courts uphold the EPO’s logic, then all that is required [...]

The All Party Parliamentary Internet Group (APIG) releases its report into Digital Rights Management. The inquiry received over 90 written submissions from consumers, Think Tanks, libraries, print media publishers, the film and music industries and lawyers. An oral evidence session was organised at the House of Commons in February when a cross selection of the [...]

Starnberg, Germany (June 06, 2006) — Florian Mueller, the founder of the NoSoftwarePatents.com campaign, has published his book, “No Lobbyists As Such - The War over Software Patents in the European Union”, on the Internet. Over 377 pages, Mueller tells the story of the legislative process that ended in July last year with a landslide [...]

A meeting on the UKPO consultation on Inventive Step and its relation to software and business process patents in the UK and EU organized by FFII-UK. It is free to attend but as we need to know numbers please let us know if you plan to come by emailing coordinator@ffii.org.uk When: Monday May 22nd 2006, 1730 - [...]

As the EU Commission seeks to build a European Digital Library, PJ, of the award winning Groklaw website, sets her sights on the world leading British Library and in particular on its increasingly controversial attitude to DRM, fair-dealing and copyright in the digital age. “If [the EU] duplicate what they have done at the [...]

In a statement today the EU Commission announced it has adopted a proposal for a directive to combat intellectual property offences. Specifically the directive is intended to be “[…] applied to all types of intellectual property right infringements. In the directive, all intentional infringements of an intellectual property right on a commercial scale, including attempting, aiding and abetting such [...]