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Europeans Still Battling Software Patents
rimberg writes "The FFII in the UK is issuing an alert
for
all supporters to write
to their MPs -- this weekend .
In September the European Parliament voted for strong
restrictions on software patents. But these could be set
aside at a meeting of the EU's Competitiveness
Council of Ministers on 10 November. The ministers' meeting is to be "prepared" at a meeting of senior patent
officials from across Europe even sooner: this Thursday 23 October. Unless they can be convinced otherwise before 10 November, it is
believed that UK ministers will push for the Council to adopt a November 2002 draft
text, which is even worse than the infamous McCarthy
report. The European Parliament's rules for second reading make it
very
difficult for MEPs to fix a bad text from the Council.
The FFII says it desperately need a lot of letters to go out to MPs this weekend to tell the Government how bad the November 2002 draft is.
More information at FFII-UK."
Are they trying to kill IT in the UK or what?
The smaller companies will suffer when patents are phased in and it is these smaller companies that employ workers in the UK. The larger organisations are on the whole moving many jobs to countries such as India.
Ironic, but in a few years looks like the centers for IT innovation will be China and Russia, mostly China, where respect for patent system and intellectual property in general is quite low.
Microsoft, Sun, etc. have a lot of money to spend on lobbyists.
:)
We basically have Alan Cox..
Not surprising the laws are a bit biased
To answer your question, Germany and France are not likely to agree with the UK position as it is laid out in the article. The EU institutions are notoriously slow-moving and since they showed what they feel on the subject not long ago, they are unlikely to fall prey to lobbying so soon after. Also, lobbying in the EU is not as organised as in the US - most European citizens regard the semi-formal lobbying process in the US as absolute proof of corruption of their political system.
Mother is the best bet and don't let Satan draw you too fast.
In this day and age, writing to your MP or Senator just has no effect. Instead you should send cash or blackmail threats. However, many people simply dont have enough money to initiate a bribe, but dont worry! thanks to capitalism, you'll soon be able to bribe someone even on a low budget! Bribe Agencies will allow many people to concentrate their money into one bribe which can be sent to any participating politician (i.e all of them). I for one cannot wait for this, it will open up bribery to even the poor!
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The poor europeans will be crushed by the suddenly vaild American software-patentes we have been creating over the last 10 years. EU firms have had no need to create patent portfolios - and will be defenselss to American lawsuits when the EU allows software patents. There will be no 'cross licensing' because EU companyines have no patents to cross license with.
Software patents are horribly evil, and if the EU is stupid enough to follow the us Americans, they will be *very* *very* sorry.
All your EU companies are now belong to IBM, MOT, and MSFT.
Moneyed corporations, non-working 'poor' and criminal prisoners are turning productive citizens into tax-slaves.
You are deluding yourself if you think that the European Parliament gets to make any serious decision. That's the job of the Council of Ministers and the Commission. By opting out of many EU initiatives over the years (social charter, Euro) and blocking others (common foreign policy, common defense), the UK is going AGAINST most European nations. Also, 86 (not 87) seats out of 623 is insignificant. France and Germany (whom you outright discount) together have 186 seats. Not enough to make policy, anyway, so I wonder what your point was.
Mother is the best bet and don't let Satan draw you too fast.
This may be the best opportunity left for you to prevent software patents in your own country
The United States Patent Office and the Japanese Patent Office have already achieved their goal of software patents in their own countries. The European Patent Office (supported by all the European national patent offices) is the third partner in the Trilateral Commission, and if it is able to legalize software patents in Europe, each partner will have a very strong position of apparent international legitimacy from which to fight any backlash in their own regions.
And then, rest of the World, watch out.
Between them, these 3 regions have a massive amount of economic power, and they will push the rest of the World to follow their lead on the software patent issue. This will be done through the world trade and intellectual property organizations (WTO and WIPO), where the countries on the receiving end of this pressure will probably concede the issue, given that they have more important issues to fight about (such as farming subsidies). Not that they'd necessarily want to fight it, since most governments' advisers on the subject (patent lawyers) are generally strongly in favour of extensions to patentability anyway.
So, the best remaining opportunity for you to remove or prevent software patenting in your own country may be to help fight it in Europe. If you are not European, you obviously don't have any direct say in our democratic processes, but you could still give secondary support. I guess the best way would be donating your time and money to the Foundation for a Free Information Infrastructure. Here are the links:
But if you don't think it's right for outsiders to interfere in other countries' political processes, tell that to the BSA (which drafted the original directive proposal), and the US Government (which didn't like the proposed amendments). And when they ignore you, come on and help the good guys.
P.S. I don't speak for the FFII, I just don't want to see software patents (generally unfair restrictions on people's right to write and distribute their own software) seriously harm computing all around the World.
P.P.S If you are an EU citizen, make sure your government knows what you want it to do at that November 10th meeting.
This forces those people to talk only about generalities and how much the industry depends on patents on "computer-implemented inventions", but they can never give any specific example. They are screaming bloody murder about the amendments voted by the European Parliament, but they have not yet given even one example of a patent on a "computer-implemented invention" (which is not a software patent) that will be invalidated by those amendments.
If they would outright admit they were pro-software patents, at least it would be possible to discuss with them about whether or not those are good for the economy, innovation and society at large. Right now, the discussion often gets stuck at finding the imaginary difference between "pure software" and a "computer-implemented invention".
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