On Document Freedom Day 2012 (March 28th) Internet company 1&1 was awarded for offering an open standards based and interoperable chat application to their customers. (More info)

On Document Freedom Day 2011 (March 30th) tagesschau.de was awarded by FSFE and FFII for making their programs available in the open video format "Ogg Theora". (More info)

In November 2010 the FFII has set up a working group to inform the public about conferences, consultations and political decisions regarding FFII's themes using GridCalendar.

June 9-12 was LinuxTag 2010 in Berlin. The FFII did a workshop about current developments in software patents and open standards and other FFII topics. For example we discussed the current status of EPLA/UPLS and the recent pro-software patent decision of the Federal Court (BGH) in Germany. There were interviews recorded on video about these topics as well.

At Document Freedom Day 2010 (March 31st) the FFII lauded German radio stations for their usage of the open Ogg Vorbis format for live streaming. "We feel more honoured by this award than by a Grimme Award", said the managing director of Deutschlandradio online services while cutting the DFD cake with the slogan "rOGG on!".

Evolution summit 2010 Civil Society groups and the FFII promote a conception of culture that benefits everybody – citizens, creators and entrepreneurs – a model that stimulates creativity and not just collection, and, above all, a model that does respect the Internet.

Call for papers for the Knowright2010 conference on the Interaction of Information Related Rights, Information Technology and Knowledge Management. Find out more about the scientific conference at the OCG website.

Behind closed doors the EU, US and Japan negotiate an Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA). No official drafts are published. ACTA will contain a new international benchmark for legal frameworks on the enforcement of copyrights, trade mark rights, patents and others. FFII ACTA WG presents an analysis of the planned Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA).

Dec. 1, 2009, the European Union Lisbon Treaty will enter into force. Our FFII ACTA WG presents a draft analysis of the EU competence to conclude the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA) and other trade agreements under a Lisbon regime.

FFII analyses a new European Interoperability Framework 2.0 Draft. FFII explains why a release in its current form would undermine interoperability. The new draft is a follow-up to a famous earlier document 1.0 with a strong emphasis on genuine open standards (and open source). The FFII makes 10 recommendations on how to improve the EIF 2.0.

Update of the Classic FFII Patented Webshop. The webshop demonstrates the effect of trivial software patent grants for business freedom in Europe. Website and posters are currently available in German and English. Please help us to translate our Webshop in other European languages.

Alberto Barrionuevo participates in the Barcelona Free Culture Forum on behalf of FFII, Alberto Barrionuevo speaks about civil digital rights and coordinates cooperations with Freeknowledge in the field of open standards.

New European petition to stop software patents: With support the FFII and others, software developers launched a petition in 28 languages to stop software patents and protect European innovators. It requests legislative clarifications to clear out the legal uncertainty and imbalances created by software patents. Please sign the Petition, and add a banner to your site

Bilski case at the Supreme Court: The FFII and IP Justice filed a joint Amicus Curiae Brief to the U.S. Supreme Court. The case Bilski v. Kappos is expected to become a landmark ruling on the future of the U.S. patent system. Our Brief explains the interlink of software and business methods, and points out alternatives to the so called Machine-or-Transformation test used for categorizing patents. Bilski v. Kappos is considered the single most important decision worldwide on the issue of patents on business methods, software and algorithms since the rejection of the EU Software Patents Directive.

EPO presidential Referral G3/08 ("Brimelow-Referral") on the matter of software patent claims. Interested parties were invited to file statements - Amicus Briefs - to the EPO Enlarged Board Of Appeal. The FFII created a working group to contribute to the referral, and a dedicated staff team worked full time on this issue. The FFII submitted a statement, helped other players and raised awareness to many affected corporations about the Referral. More than 89 statements have been published by the EPO Register. Find out more about our contributions to the G3-08 Referral.

The FFII follows closely the negotiations on an Anti-Counterfeiting Treaty, and outlined shortcomings and democratic deficit. The FFII issued several press releasess about ACTA which have been broadly covered by the media. On the 2009-07-01 the Centre for Intellectual property Law of Utrecht University (1636) organised a lecture by Prof. Charles McManis about ACTA. Present were four Dutch professors in "intellectual property" (Grosheide, De Cock Buning, Brinkhof and Van Engelen - all also renowned attorneys). FFII's Ante Wessels participated adding remarks about the problems of ACTA. On the 2009-08-15 he contributed a speech about ACTA as highlight of HAR2009, see the paper to ACTA and the video of the conference

The FFII e.V. used the opportunity to file an opposition proceeding against the gift ordering patent (EP0927945 "Method and system for placing a purchase order via a communications network") as an example for an eCommerce patent. Find out more about the FFII vs. Amazon case at our documentation page in German language. You will find status update on the case at the European Patent Office in Munich where a oral hearing is scheduled for 11 Nov 2009.

The FFII Transparency working group created the Twitter feed Euronen to enable better public transparency of preparatory documents from the European Council of Ministers for citizens of the Union and civil society persons. It is part of FFII's focus on eGovernment and OpenData contributions to democratic citizenship. Follow our Euronen feed here

24 September is annual Software Patents World Day to commemorate the struggle against the European Union Software Patent Directive. As every year our teams raised awareness about the impact of patents on the future of software development, this year joined by activities in India. Find out more at .

As part of the research for the Brimelow referral G03/08 FFII dedicated staff created an internal digital document repository with thousands of relevant electronic documents from scientific books and papers to advocacy documents, most of them related to immaterial property rights. A central knowledge base which will simplify our activities for the future.

Participation in the WIPO Conference on Intellectual Property and Public Policy Issues on the 2009-07-13 and on the 2009-03-23/27 on the thirteenth session of the WIPO Standing Committee on the Law of Patents. Extensive reports are available to FFII members on https://ffii.org/Intern

FFII Board decides to endorse the Göttingen Declaration of Aktionsbündnis Urheberrecht für Bildung und Wissenschaft. FFII e.V. also has a Copyright Working Group which deals with the developments in the field of copyright.

Participation on critical activities about the European Patent System in Munich on the 2009-04-15. The FFII invited Richard Stallman to hold a speech (video-1, video-2) together with the FFII founder Hartmut Pilch. See pictures and the report (in German)

Members of the FFII held regularly and tireless critical presentations and participate in events about software patents, open standards, net neutrality and free informational infrastructures. An Example (see others bellow): Munich legal scholar Georg Jakob hold a presentation on current software patent related challenges in Europe at Berlin LinuxTag trade fair (2009-06-26): The never ending story...

FFII joins the European OpenSpectrum Alliance to contribute to wireless free information infrastructures and unlicensed access to the digital dividend. Alliance web site

Endorsement of the Platform for Internet Access Rights http://www.blackouteurope.eu/

2009-06 HSF Paris FFII-President Benjamin Henrion speaks at the conference about the EU software patents version 3.0 and UPLS. Slides are available.

Our system administrators finally delivered a fresh membership database frontend which simplifies the editing of the accounts from FFII supporters and members. It also allows our supporters and members to update themselves their contact data without the need of staff intervention. https://members.ffii.org/