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FFII: Site complexity hindered legal fix

Ingrid Marson ZDNet.co.uk

Published: 03 Aug 2005 16:00 BST

The FFII admitted on Tuesday that the complexity of its Web site meant that it was unable to immediately follow the instructions of a court order, resulting in its site being temporarily taken down.

The anti-patent campaign group's Web site was taken offline late on Monday by its hosting company, following a request from Nutzwerk, a German software company. The company had obtained a preliminary injunction against the FFII from a court in Hamburg at the end of June.

Hartmut Pilch, the chairman of the FFII, said the court order referred to only eight phrases on the site. The organisation made an effort to remove these phrases, but due to site complexity, a few remaining instances remained in certain parts of the site, according to Pilch.

"We removed those [phrases] in mid-July, but due to the complexity of the Web site two to three chunks remained for a few days, until everything was removed by the 22nd [July]. However there were still two kinds of pages in which the sentences could be found: (1) pages which report about the [Hamburg] court order and quote the sentences which the court banned. (2) hidden remnants on the site in secondary files that nobody reads, such as un-updated PDF versions of the changed HTML files," said Pilch in an email.

Pilch is unhappy that Nutzwerk went to the FFII's hosting company to handle the remaining instances, rather than contacting the FFII initially.

"Nutzwerk did not notify us of this fact, but instead sent letters claiming that our site was violating the court order, to our provider and DNS hoster and to people who link to us, without explaining how we were violating, and setting a narrow deadline after which they said these parties would face an injunction," said Pilch.

Nutzwerk has been issued with five provisional court orders against the FFII in the last few months, as well as the injunction from the Hamburg court.

Pilch said these legal cases are squeezing the finances of the FFII. The non-profit organisation, which is funded primarily by voluntary contributions, reported an income of €172,000 from January to July 2005.

René Holzer, the chief executive of Nutzwerk, told ZDNet UK on Tuesday that there are "more than a dozen" things that are untrue on the FFII Web site and said it was pursuing the FFII to protect its reputation.

The FFII has already found another hosting company, but the transfer of the FFII.org domain could take a few days. It advised visitors to go to nosoftwarepatents.com instead.