German Parliament decided upon a joint motion to limit software patents urging the German Government to take steps to limit the granting of patents on computer programs. Software should exclusively be covered by copyright, and the rights of the copyright holders should not be devalued by third parties' software patents.

"End Software Patents (ESP) has filed an amicus curiae brief in the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit's (CAFC) rehearing of the In re Bilski case. The rehearing could lead to the elimination of patents on software.

... the different kinds of objections to software patents, including the point that there are only limited ways of thinking about programming, as Donald Knuth's The Art of Computer Programming shows.

...the practical benefits and harms of software patents, and spoke at length about the difference between legal protection of software in the form of patents and via copyright.

The Free Software Foundation today announced funding for the End Software Patents project to document the case for ending software patents worldwide.

Rambus antitrust comes to the Supreme Court; Bilski strikes again; isolated hardware patents news; trolls attack

"Brussels, 12 May 2009 -- The European Commission is pushing for software patents via a centralised trusted patent court that would be created with the United Patent Litigation System (UPLS), an international treaty that would remove national courts. This court system would be shielded against any review by the European Court of Justice (ECJ).

In IBM's brief for the Supreme Court's upcoming review of Bilski, they claim that allowing software patents "promotes collaboration among software developers (such as open source development)" Please help document the actual relationship on swpat.org

"BOSTON, Massachusetts, USA -- Friday, October 2, 2009 -- The Free Software Foundation (FSF) today submitted an amicus curiae brief calling on the Supreme Court to affirm that software ideas are not patentable.

Patents threaten every software developer, and the patent wars we have long feared have broken out. Software developers and software users – which in our society, is most people – need software to be free of patents.