26.05.06
Posted in Legal at 1:22 pm by Jens Hardings
This comes as a surprise. In the last few years, the debate in Europe around the patentability of software had the European Commission arguing that it was necessary to legislate according to current practice of the European Patent Office (EPO), in a “harmonisation of the status quo”. The EPO should not be granting patents on software, however there are over 30.000 such patents already granted.
Finally the European Commission has ruled that the European Court of Justice (ECJ) can and should question the validity of patents granted by the EPO without following the rules set by the European Patent Convention. While this is not the final word on forbidding the granting of software patents in Europe, nor a solution to the problem, it is a first step in the right direction.
Read the press release of the FFII for more information.
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02.05.06
Posted in Legal, Transparency at 12:47 pm by Jens Hardings
Question to Sony: Are you licensing or selling those songs?
Sony: It depends on who is asking. Are you an artist or a customer?
According to Yahoo! News (via BoingBoing), Sony is being sued for treating incomes due to internet download of songs as normal record sales rather than song licensing. This means that artists receive 4,25 cents per song instead of 30 cents. However, when a user downloads a song, the indications are the opposite: “you are buying a licence and thus not the same rights as in a normal record sale”.
Sounds a lot like the mexican saying “Jalisco nunca pierde, y cuando pierde, arrebata” (”Jalisco never looses, and when it looses, it seizes”). Some decision has to be made on which way it’s gonna be. Probably the contracts will be seized corrected to give 4,25 cents to artists on song licensing, or else Jalisco would loose.
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