 amicus curiae briefs, had to be filed by the end of April 2009.Around a hundred amicus curiae briefs have been submitted, including briefs by Accenture, the Association for Competitive Technology (ACT), the American Intellectual Property Law Association (AIPLA), the International Association for the Protection of Industrial Property (AIPPI), Apple Inc., BT, BUSINESSEUROPE, Canonical Group Ltd, the Computer & Communication Industry Association (CCIA), Chartered Institute of Patent Attorneys (CIPA), the Computing Technology Industry Association (CompTIA), DIGITALEUROPE, Ericsson, the European Patent Institute (epi), the Foundation for a Free Information Infrastructure (FFII), the Free Software Foundation Europe (FSFE), the International Federation of Intellectual Property Attorneys (FICPI), France Télécom, IBM, the Irish Free Software Organisation (IFSO), ITechLaw, the Japan Intellectual Property Association (JIPA), Prof. Donald Knuth, Licensing Executives Society International (LESI), Microsoft Corporation and General Electric Company, Philips, the Pirate Party, Pitney Bowes, the Polish Patent Office, Red Hat, SAP, Siemens, Prof. Joseph Straus, the UNION of European Practitioners in Industrial Property, and the United Kingdom.According to the "New York Times", the referral had been welcomed "by lawyers and software engineers alike".