The Case against Weapons Patents

scheduled Lightning Talk at 34C3 (Day 3, December 29th 12:00, Saal Borg)

(Download slides),

The talk centers on the date when Weapons Patents went online. So the talk is related to the post when the Weapons Patents went online. (Deutsche Fassung: Als die Waffenpatente Online gingen)

Full description, as I put it into the 34C3-wiki:

20th century Terrorists like Andreas Baader or Ulrike Meinhof
could not learn from Weapons Patents how to build bombs.

But in october 1998 the European Patent office (EPO) put 30 Million patents online in full text. On April 21th, 1999 the USPTO put a big batch of Patents online. These releases included weapons patents. They included US Patent US5698812 Thermite destructive device. And worse. Patents comprise instructions explaining how to build the patented stuff.

Thus 21th century Terrorists like Mohammed Atta have easy access on instructions how to build Weapons.

This is not acceptable. This is one reason why Weapons patents should be banned.

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