http://computerworld.co.nz/news.nsf/dev ... investment
http://computerworld.co.nz/news.nsf/new ... protection

The above are pro-software patent statements made by Microsoft and the NZICT which includes Cisco, Dell, ExpressData, Gen-i, Hewlett Packard, Kordia, IBM, Ingram Micro, Microsoft, Unisys, and Vodafone among its membership. It would be good for us to come up with a decent press release rebutting the arguments in those articles. I don't have time to go through it now (it's late and I'm trying to get work done) but the general gist is that programmers and investors need patent protection or they will be afraid of having their ideas stolen. We should come up with rebuttals about how the same are afraid to invest due to fears of patent mines and see if we can come up with some good NZ internet start ups that didn't have patents when they became famous (can we check that for companies such as trademe, adult dating services, etc?) The very fact that those companies did *not* have patents and grew and became huge will help to bolster out position, and I would like to be able to challenge the opposition to come up with new zealand startups that got big with the help of software patents.

Please post back and hopefully we can get something good out quickly.

UPDATE:
Oh ... and American companies as well. Let's come up with a laundry list of huge companies in the states that did not have software patents until *after* they became huge. The companies mentioned above will be a very good start. Anyone know how to search the US and NZ patents to see what a particular company has and when it filed its first patents?

Microsoft.

Yeah, software patents are pretty new.

Microsoft / AJ Park still trying desperately to stir up controversy.

We need another press release on this .. similar to the last one probably except I'd like to be a bit clearer about why software should NOT be patentable, how the select committee has fully listened to both sides of the argument, and how much we despise these ongoing and underhanded attempts to subvert the democratic process.

Note that this is also similar to what happened with the copyright bill, where after hearing all sides the select committee removed the disconnection clause entirely, but lobbying from copyright interests had it reintroduced.

http://www.ajpark.com/articles/2011/04/ ... ntions.php

Also some great resources to base any future press release on;
http://nzrise.org.nz/resources/ (and make sure we credit them