FFII have issued a press release: ‘2000 IT bosses say NO to EU software patents, call for rejection of McCarthy software patent directive proposal’:
A ‘Petition for a Free Europe without Software Patents’ has gained more than 150000 signatures. Among the supporters are more than 2000 company owners and chief executives and 25000 developpers and engineers from all sectors of the European information and telecommunication industries, as well as more than 2000 scientists and 180 lawyers. Companies like Siemens, IBM, Alcatel and Nokia lead the list of those whose researchers and developpers want to protect programming freedom and copyright property against what they see as a ‘patent landgrab’.
Reminder: there’s only 7 days left before the plenary on June 30th, so if you’re European, write to your MEP backing FFII’s position. Full text here.