FFII: EU Trade Agreement with Korea Endangers Developers
The Foundation for a Free Information Infrastructure (FFII) perceives the free trade agreement of the EU with Korea as a massive competitive disadvantage to the EU and a danger to software developers, free software projects and small and mid-sized companies.
The protest of the FFI addresses the Korea Free Trade Agreement clause for intellectual property rights where large penalties for patent infringements are established. Covered among them are damage payments, destruction of production materials and removal of online software repositories. Circumstantial evidence is enough to initiate seizures and injunctions and any accusation can lead to frozen development. Thus the FFI, after its analysis, came to the conclusion that the Korean Free Trade Agreement was a threat to software providers, free software projects, and actually any undertaking that in any way implements software.
FFI analyst Ante Wessels finds the sanctions to have disproportionate penalties: "These strong measures may be justified against hard core counterfeiters. They are not justified against software developers. Software patents are so broad in scope, doubtful in validity, and so numerous that unintentional infringement is unavoidable in the normal course of business. Therefore, competitors and patent trolls can always find a stick to hit software companies, companies that use software and free software projects. The whole sector is at risk." He adds, "How many small and medium-sized enterprises have the money to defend themselves against this?"
The EU and Republic of Korea concluded the agreement after two years of secret negotiations. The agreement should now be ratified by the EU parliament and member nations. The FFII characterizes the intellectual property clauses of the agreement as detrimental to innovation and recommends that the EU parliament strike them from the agreement.
Subscribe to our Linux Newsletters
Find Linux and Open Source Jobs
Subscribe to our ADMIN Newsletters
Support Our Work
Linux Magazine content is made possible with support from readers like you. Please consider contributing when you’ve found an article to be beneficial.
News
-
Red Hat Releases RHEL 10 Early
Red Hat quietly rolled out the official release of RHEL 10.0 a bit early.
-
openSUSE Joins End of 10
openSUSE has decided to not only join the End of 10 movement but it also will no longer support the Deepin Desktop Environment.
-
New Version of Flatpak Released
Flatpak 1.16.1 is now available as the latest, stable version with various improvements.
-
IBM Announces Powerhouse Linux Server
IBM has unleashed a seriously powerful Linux server with the LinuxONE Emperor 5.
-
Plasma Ends LTS Releases
The KDE Plasma development team is doing away with the LTS releases for a good reason.
-
Arch Linux Available for Windows Subsystem for Linux
If you've ever wanted to use a rolling release distribution with WSL, now's your chance.
-
System76 Releases COSMIC Alpha 7
With scores of bug fixes and a really cool workspaces feature, COSMIC is looking to soon migrate from alpha to beta.
-
OpenMandriva Lx 6.0 Available for Installation
The latest release of OpenMandriva has arrived with a new kernel, an updated Plasma desktop, and a server edition.
-
TrueNAS 25.04 Arrives with Thousands of Changes
One of the most popular Linux-based NAS solutions has rolled out the latest edition, based on Ubuntu 25.04.
-
Fedora 42 Available with Two New Spins
The latest release from the Fedora Project includes the usual updates, a new kernel, an official KDE Plasma spin, and a new System76 spin.