Leo Baumann and Software Patents
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Summary
Leo Baumann was an assistant of Angelika Niebler until mid 2003 and then became the press speaker of EICTA. In both functions he was at the head of misinformation campaign against the European Parliament's amendments to the software patents directive (mispresenting it as making anything that uses software unpatentable, claiming that innovation in the ICT field depends on patentability etc).
News & Chronology
- 04-10-20 Systems 2004 - TV Studio, ntv - In german: mms://62.146.66.3/3151systems04/ntv/300_20_10_1630.wmv (can be viewed using mplayer - using patented technology...)
04-09-29 Schwechat Event Press release by Concorde
Consensus between Baumann and Dr. Friedrich Bock of UBIT.at
"Die Forderungen der EICTA deckten sich dabei größtenteils mit jenen des von Dr. Friedrich Bock vom Fachverband für Unternehmensberatung und Informationstechnologie ubit (http://www.ubit.at) vorgestellten Positionspapiers. In Bezug auf die EU-Richtlinie zum gegenständlichen Thema postuliert der Fachverband den ausreichenden Schutz von Softwareprogrammen durch das Urheberrecht..."
Bock indeed tried to present his pro-patent position as a patent-critical one in order to sway the Austrian chamber of commerce). He plays with doublespeak on "technical character" and "inventivity", saying that normal software should be unpatentable but some very rocket-science-like stuff should be patentable, leaving out the question of how to achieve this distinction and how to avoid the typical broad claims that tend to turn any (trivial or non-trivial) software creation into a series of trivial patents.
leo baumann at eicta org
