Carlo Piana is a lawyer by training and a Free Software advocate. A qualified attorney in Italy, Piana has been practicing IT law since 1995, focusing his practice on software, technology, standardization, data protection and digital liberties in general, and serves as external General Counsel to the Free Software Foundation Europe ("FSFE"). Piana has been involved in some of the cornerstone legal cases in Europe, such as the long-running antitrust battle between the EU Commission and Microsoft where he represented both the FSFE and the Samba Team. Piana is a member of the Editorial Committee of the International Free and Open Source Software Law Review ("IFOSS L. rev.") and is president of the board of directors of the Protocol Freedom Information Foundation. In 2008 he has established a free lance consulting practice on IT law, from where he leads a small group of IT lawyers named Array [http://arraylaw.eu].
Authored Comments
I get what you say, it is a form of "IP Imperialism" for which USA will be retributed badly in the next years when China will be the most dominant patenting jurisdiction, and it is where some of the most relevat IT innovation occurs nowadays.
Anyway, to have an example of bullying you don't have to go very far, USA over USA the case of the first company behind Siri is quite telling.
Knut, good points, but I am speaking of patent regimes without any specific reference to USA. Why do you believe I assume that the patent system is astray only in the US? The reference I made was to the UK, if you are interested in more of the story, here is an article by Michele Boldrin: http://mises.org/daily/3280
Moreover, as the current regime is, US and European patents are come very close to each other, in a bad synergy I should add. At least now submarine patents are less practicable, this is the only major improvement I see.