First of all, "civil rights" means (in the US context) a particular set of issues, which aren't actually the core ones defended by EFF or the ACLU, although they sometimes overlap. I think you mean civil liberties.
Second, EFF has been working on intellectual property reform since its founding. It's long argued that antiquated or misapplied ideas of how IP should be enforced are actually a free expression issue, since (among other ideas) code is speech. It's actually one of the core principles at the basis of mapping traditional civil liberties onto the digital realm, which is at least some of the (looser) ideas behind "digital rights". Patent reform is part of that. It's not just about Samsung and Apple, it's about people being able to express themselves -- in free software, or the application of algorithms, in a digital world.
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First of all, "civil rights" means (in the US context) a particular set of issues, which aren't actually the core ones defended by EFF or the ACLU, although they sometimes overlap. I think you mean civil liberties.
Second, EFF has been working on intellectual property reform since its founding. It's long argued that antiquated or misapplied ideas of how IP should be enforced are actually a free expression issue, since (among other ideas) code is speech. It's actually one of the core principles at the basis of mapping traditional civil liberties onto the digital realm, which is at least some of the (looser) ideas behind "digital rights". Patent reform is part of that. It's not just about Samsung and Apple, it's about people being able to express themselves -- in free software, or the application of algorithms, in a digital world.