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Our goals

Revision as of 12:28, 15 March 2010 by Ciaran (talk | contribs) (Reverted edits by 195.177.73.102 (Talk) to last revision by Ciaran)

en.swpat.org is a wiki, editable by anyone, which aims to build an information resource for campaigns against software patents around the world.

How do we "end software patents"?

What we can do right now in a given region depends on current events there, but in the long term we have to work toward four goals:

  1. Legislation that clearly excludes software ideas from patentability
  2. Patent office conduct that consistently rejects applications for patents on software ideas
  3. Court rulings which confirm that patents on software ideas are not valid
  4. Understanding among politicians that software patents are a bad idea

The role of en.swpat.org

To achieve these goals, we have to develop solid arguments and legal wordings for how to describe the limits of patentability in a way that puts software ideas clearly outside of the scope.

There have been many great campaigns organised around the world and most of the information they gathered is relevant in other countries. For example, if market analysts in the Netherlands publish a report saying that software patents are bad for innovation, then that report is useful in many countries, not just the Netherlands. With that in mind, swpat.org's role is to make all the great info from the many campaigns accessible to each other campaign. This means we can all build on the status quo instead of each starting from zero.

Like software, anti-swpat info is developed incrementally.

Side issues

There are also minor intermediary goals and other minor ways to also fight software patents, but the list of points above are the real goals of anyone who is against software patents.

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