Re: [Patents] The politics of software over-protection -- moving forward..

>   The Intellectual Property Policy Directorate (IPPD) of Industry Canada
> doesn't appear to be listening to us yet, so discussing statutory
> exceptions to software is not yet in the cards.

I'd assume that they will not listen to you/us any time very soon, no
matter what subject you/we want to raise with them.

A group of swiss linux users published a petition to the Swiss Patent
Office (ige.ch) in november 2000.  They did not only get no answer.  The
result was that the Swiss delegation (consisting of ige.ch people) at the
Diplomatic Conference of November 2000 vehemently demanded deletion of the
exclusion of software patents from Art 52(2), while all the others
followed the position of the DE-EN-FR governments, which was to leave Art
52(2) as is and solve their problems via a EU directive instead.

This is probably, also in Canada, the likely outcome of focussing your
efforts on patent offices.

-- 
Hartmut Pilch, FFII & Eurolinux Alliance              tel. +49-89-12789608
Protecting Innovation against Patent Inflation	     http://swpat.ffii.org/
140,000 signatures against software patents          http://noepatents.org/