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Paris, the 20th of December 2001. AFAS, AFUA, Anshare, Europe Shareware, and RUSH publish a synthetic sheet on the software patents in order to open up the debate and demonstrate point by point that the position of the pro-patents lobby is biased and based on a dogma that has no economic foundation. (1)
The authors, organizations and companies of the shareware world are today unanimous in their denunciation of the European Patent Office's illegal practices and are asking that a democratic control be applied to it. This software patent policy weakens the copyright and penalize in the same time the innovation of the european software industry.
Access to the sheet on software patents:
http://www.europe-shareware.org/pages/fiche.html (french version)
http://www.europe-shareware.org/pages/fiche_brevets.PDF (french PDF file)
http://www.europe-shareware.org/pages/fiche_e.html (english version)
For a Europe free of software patents, you can sign the EuroLinux petition : http://petition.eurolinux.org (already more than 98,000 signatures)
References
(1) Mikro- und makrokoönomische Implikationen der Patentierbarkeit von Softwareinnovationen: Geistige Eigentumsrechte in der Informationstechnologie im Spannungsfeld von Wettbewerb und Innovation - Max Planck Institut und Fraunhofer Institut - http://www.bmwi.de/Homepage/download/technologie/Softwarepatentstudie.pdf
Combining Inventions in Multi-invention Products: Organizational Choices, Patents, and Public Policy - Deepak Somaya and David J. Teece - http://www.rhsmith.umd.edu/lbpp/dsomaya/Papers/DSDT00.pdf
Sequential Innovation, Patents, and Imitation - James Bessen and Eric Maskin - http://www.researchoninnovation.org/patent.pdf
Software Useright, Solving Inconsistencies of Software Patents - Jean-Paul Smets. - http://www.smets.com/it/policy/useright/useright.pdf
About A.F.A.S. (Association Française des Auteurs de Sharewares) - www.afas-fr.org
Created in November 1995, AFAS (Association Française des Auteurs de Shareware) works to improve the shareware image in France. To do so, AFAS publishes for its members a large volume of useful informations on how to create and distribute sharewares, in order to help them to code and to spread softwares which follow some quality and functionnality criteria. AFAS also works for a respectful distribution of sharewares following some rules and for a better understanding of the concept by the users.
About AFUA (Association Française des Utilisateurs d'Amiga) - www.afua.asso.fr
The object of the association is to promote in France the Amiga computer system and to propose services to the users of this platform. It also produces translations of softwares and documents related to the Amiga and has a software development team for the AmigaDE environment.
About Anshare - www.anshare.com
Since some years, the Anshare company supports
and promotes french authors and their softwares via its different
websites. Up to 1500 authors and more than 3000 softwares are now
presented in our catalog.
http://www.anshare.com -
http://www.gratuiciel.com -
http://www.sharedif.com
About Europe Shareware - www.europe-shareware.org
The object of Europe Shareware Association is to translate (interface and documentation), promote and distribute European sharewares. The Association is present at the moment in France, Spain, Poland and North America and it distributes more then 110 sharewares of about fifty European authors for Atari, Java and MacOS systems.
About R.U.Sh (Regroupement des Utilisateurs du Shareware) - www.rushweb.org
Association aiming to defend free and free
testing software and to share "softs" and "web" resources and
experiences.
To its name :
- R.U.Sh quarterly Magazine on CD-ROM (News about sharewares,
Linux, scene, etc)
- 3 GB Web Server (more than 3000 French-speaking titles) -
http://www.rushweb.org/
- MAIA operation (free resources and educational software) -
http://webvilles.org/maiaweb
- Webville Portal (800 local linked sites) -
http://webvilles.org
- Local experimental web site (local information processing and PHP
CSS resources development) -
http://webvilles.org/seysses/
Press Contacts
AFAS: Thierry Dubosse - infos@afas-fr.org
AFUA: Bertrand Presles - president@afua.asso.fr
Anshare: François Milhiet - webmaster@anshare.com - (+33) 467 648 741
Europe Shareware: Sylvain Perchaud - sylvain@europe-shareware.org
- (+33) 674 758 551
RUSH: Guy Leblond - rush@webvilles.org
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