The Foundation for a Free Information Infrastructure or FFII is a lobbying association based in Munich, Germany, and strongly against software patents. FFII initially took emphasis on electronic data processing as well as language and writing.

FFII's view is that software patents created a mess in the United States, and, for many years now, FFII has been committed to "sparing the economy of the European Union the same mess". 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. In 2003, it strongly lobbied the European Parliament against the proposed Directive on the Patentability of Computer-Implemented Inventions.

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 some SME, many software developers, some software users, some system administrators, some scientists, some academics and some economists.

FFII represents (as of March 2004):

• more than 20.000 registered members
• more than 1.200 companies
• more than 2.000 CEOs of SMEs
• more than 50.000 of them European supporters (about 75.000 worldwide)
• more than 300.000 signatures for a software-patent free Europe.

FFII organises Conferences against patenting of software in Brussels, Belgium, at least once a year, the last one took place on April 14, 2004 (see external link for details).

Donors

Donors are increasing, but at the moment there some major companies, that have donated:

• 15 000€ - Soros Foundation (http://www.soros.org/)
• $10 000 RedHat
• 5000 DEM - SuSE
• 5000 DEM - Infomatec
• 2000$ - FSF(FreeSoftwareFoundation) (http://www.fsf.org/)(GNU)}
• 3000€ - Lars Mathiassen

Partners in Europe

EuroLinux, EFFI, ABUL, AFUL, EDRi, AEL, FSF Europe, Vrijschrift, (see links to lists of organisations below)

See also

• Patent
• Software patent
• EU Directive on the Patentability of Computer-Implemented Inventions
• Harmut Pilch
• European Information, Communications and Consumer Electronics Technology Industry Associations (EICTA)

External links

• FFII main site (http://www.ffii.org/)
• FFII event management (http://plone.ffii.org/)
• FFII UK section (http://www.ffii.org.uk/)
• FFII Polish section (http://www.ffii.org.pl/)
• FFII Swedish section (http://www.ffii.se/)
• FFII France (http://www.ffii.fr/)
• FFII Belgium (http://www.ffii.be/)
• FFII Galizia (http://galiza.ffii.org/)
• AEL wiki: main reasons why people are opposed to patenting of software (http://wiki.ael.be/index.php/TopReasonsWhyNoEpatents)

Other organisations

• Eurolinux member organisations (http://www.eurolinux.org/members/)
• Organisations also in fight against patenting of software (http://wiki.ael.be/index.php/SwpatCampaignSites)

About the FTC/DoJ hearings and the report

• FFII: some written submissions (http://swpat.ffii.org/papers/ftc02)
• FTC: and Intellectual Property Law and Policy in the Knowledge-Based Economy (http://www.ftc.gov/opp/intellect/Competition)
• FFII UK: Extracts from the report (http://www.ffii.org.uk/ftc/ftc.html)