Business Software Alliance

Business Software Alliance (BSA) is a union of software companies. It lobbies for software patents.

In the EU software patent directive, when the European Commission published their first draft text (which the Commission should have written themselves) the author field of the file's properties had the name of the BSA lobbyist Francisco Mingorance.

EU lobbying

The BSA lobbied for software patents and supported Campaign for Creativity and patents4innovation.

2005 SME patent study

In June 2005, the BSA published a study showing that only 20% of software patents granted by the European Patent Office go to SMEs.

The study also showed that the majority of software patents granted by the EPO were to non-European companies.

Of course, since the findings don't support their policy, the BSA had to dress it up, such as in their press release: Study shows importance of cii patents for european small- and medium-sized companies.

And the study said that "computer-implemented inventions" was another term for software patents.Can you help? We really need to find a copy of that study.

Related pages on ESP Wiki

• Corruption and bullying

External links

• FFII's page about BSA (and another one)
• BSA figures do not add up, June 24^th 2005 (and page 2)
• FFII PR: BSA: Only 20% of CII are SME-owned, CII equals swpat in the US, about the 2005 study

Bilski briefs

• BSA's brief for the Supreme Court in the Bilski case, 2009
• BSA's brief for the CAFC in the Bilski case, 2008