On January 16, the European Commission (EC) announced a consultation on the future of the European patent system. An SAP official has already said that “it’s starting again”, meaning that this is the next round of the European software patent debate!

Companies, organizations and individuals who would like to tell the EU their opinion on what its patent policy should look like have until the end of this month to answer the EC’s questionnaire. But in order to do so, one has to wade through hundreds of pages of legislative proposals and related documentation. That’s why I wrote up a position paper that everyone can use to make his or her contribution and write to the EC:

I just got a Google News Alert that contained the URLs of two great articles on the issue of software patents: one by eWeek’s Steven Vaughan-Nichols and another one on Computerworld.com by Martin Goetz, who in 1968 received the first US software patent ever. Both articles appeared on the occasion of the settlement of the patent dispute over BlackBerry, which I mentioned in my first blog entry here.

There have been plenty of columns on US Web sites that talked about the negative implications of software patents. However, a mistake made

This is my first posting in my own blog. Previously I posted a few comments to my Slashdot Journal, but other than that I’m a newbie WRT blogging. I also have a German-language blog (accessible via the German-language section of the Web site, which has its own URL).

The Web site will soon be fleshed out with a lot more content. In a few weeks I’m going to a announce in greater detail my forthcoming book No Lobbyists As Such - The War over Software Patents in the European Union. I decided to start the site and this blog on a preliminary basis because, within a matter of days, I’m going to publish a position paper here in reply to the European Commission’s