France To Launch a National Patent Troll

zoobab writes "France is creating a state sponsored patent fund, FranceBrevets, which primary focus will be to sponsor, acquire and license patents in the ICT (read software patents) sector. The patent fund is at the initiative of the minister of Research, Valérie Pécresse, the Ministry of Industry, Energy and digital economy, Eric Besson. The primary target of the fund is to collect licenses on those patents, which is already seen in France as the biggest patent troll of the country. France is also supporting the European Unitary Patent, which is seen by many at the final attempt to validate software patents in Europe."

Re:Godwin

[king neckbeard]

There's a certain point where sacrificing freedoms, privacy, and such is no longer worth the benefits sacrificing them makes. Worse yet, these huge losses of freedoms don't seem to work well in practice today. The PATRIOT Act hasn't made Americans safer to any real degree, and the staggering amounts of CCTV haven't been effective in stopping crime in the UK.

Re:Godwin

[Anonymous Coward]

Hah, I thought I might be the only one..
I remember reading Atlas Shrugged back in the '70s, thought it was right-wing crap (can I add, the next thing I read was the Illuminatus! trilogy)
Re-read it in the early '80s, still thought it was right-wing crap.
Re-read it in the '90s (mostly to give me a set of references to take the piss out of a Randiot I had the misfortune to deal with at the time), it worried me that some of it was starting to make sense. Still regarded is as mostly right-wing crap, but with valid points.

Re-read it a couple of times in the early '00s. Unfortunately, some parts of it almost exactly described my then current situation apropos my employer and my contributions to the 'system'. I'd hate to admit this, but it was a bit of a factor in me getting out of the field of employment I was engaged in.

The more I do look at the world, the more I think she was right, but with the wrong 'enemy' - she had an obvious bee in her bonnet regarding 'commies' which made her a bit blinkered.

Like the characters in the book, I'm currently employed doing something which (just) pays the bills, but it's not in my 'specialist' area of employment - that which I used to get paid silly money for doing (but which others were getting even sillier money for 'exploiting') which is now my 'hobby'. This wasn't a conscious decision, it was a couple of years later that I actually made the connection with the book.

(and no, I've not yet in the 30 odd years I've owned a copy of the book managed to get through Galt's diatribe...it's like all the damn songs in the LOTR trilogy, I promise myself the next time I'll really read through it, but t'other part of the brain which knows better always wins and I skip it/them - and I still maintain Atlas Shrugged is mostly right-wing crap.)