Foundation for a Free Information Infrastructure
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
The Foundation for a Free Information Infrastructure, best known as FFII, is an association based in Munich, Germany which initially took emphasis on electronic data processing as well as language and writing.
For many years now, FFII has been committed to sparing the economy of the European Union from the mess which software patents created in the United States of America. FFII has been active on this front at least since 2000 when an attempt to change the European Patent Convention to legitimize software patents failed.
The US Federal Trade Commission (FTC) and the Department of Justice (DoJ) were running hearings about patents in different sectors and found many problems with the way software patents were intruduced. Giving this as example, it warned that patentablity should not extend to new areas without due consideration of the usefulness of the expanding of the reach of the patent system.
FFII is the leading European NGO on this issue. Through its partnership with many other European organisations with the same goal, it has a reach across all nations of the EU. FFII is supported e.g. by SME, software developers, software users, system administrators, scientists, academics and economists.
FFII (as of March 04):
- more than 400 registered members
- more than 2 000 CEOs of SMEs
- more than 50 000 of them european supporters(about 61 000 worldwide)
- more than 300.000 signatures for a software-patent free Europe.
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2 Related articles 3 External links |
Partners from all over Europe
EuroLinux, EFFI, ABUL, AFUL, EDRi, AEL, FSF Europe, Vrijschrift, (see link s to lists of organisations below)
Related articles
Patent, Software patents, Harmut Pilch
External links
Other organisations: About the FTC/DoJ hearings and the report: