The Association Electronique Libre (AEL, sometimes written Association électronique libre) is a Belgian non-profit

Non-profit organization

Nonprofit organization is neither a legal nor technical definition but generally refers to an organization that uses surplus revenues to achieve its goals, rather than distributing them as profit or dividends...

 digital rights

Digital rights

The term digital rights describes the permissions of individuals legitimately to perform actions involving the use of a computer, any electronic device, or a communications network...

 advocacy and legal organization based in Belgium. Its stated mission is to "protecting the fundamental rights in the information society". It is promoting the Free Software Pact Initiative.

It has organized protests against the concept of software patent

Software patent

Software patent does not have a universally accepted definition. One definition suggested by the Foundation for a Free Information Infrastructure is that a software patent is a "patent on any performance of a computer realised by means of a computer program".In 2005, the European Patent Office...

s.