Poland Blocks Software Patents in the EU

Several people wrote in with news bits about Poland maneuvering to block software patents in the EU. Patent supporters had planned to sneak in a patent vote at a meeting devoted to agriculture. While this is a temporary reprieve, it's very likely to reappear next year.

Comments

Sigh of relief from Poland.

[Gadzinka]

You must understand situation in Poland when you read this story.

Current majority in Polish parliament comes from social-democratic SLD-UP coalition, which (the SLD part) is just rebranded communist "unity" party, ruling Poland between (AFAIR) 1947-89. Rebranded twice, I must add -- it was PZPR during soviet era, later SdRP and now SLD. The cabinet formed by this party (Miller's cabinet) fell in 2004 due to numerous corruption scandals and accusations of connections with organised crime on both national and local level.

Current cabinet is headed by prof. Belka, which was Finance Minister at the beginning of Miller's cabinet but left the cabinet due to unrealistic too-far-left plans (Belka is economist educated in US with not-so-left-wining views of economy). It has no public or parliamentary support, it is rather a result of a stalemate between President and Parliament.

Thing is, that after the fall of Miller's cabinet, SLD-UP coalition had split and further SLD split into SLD and SdPL. Depending on point in time that polls were taken, no Party of former SLD-UP coalition would pass threshold in new parliamentary elections. So when new cabinet was proposed, neither Parliament's nor President's candidates passed vote of confidence. Next step according to constitution was that either Parliament would accept President's second proposition, or it would be automatically dissolved and new elections would be held (over a year ahead of schedule).

So basically:

• MPs are glued to their chairs, counting MP salaries till the end of their term;
  
• Belka's cabinet has no Parliamentary or public support;
  
• Belka's cabinet is simply transitional until such time that new elections can be held; I have no idea when, seems to me more and more that at default date after a full term of current parliament.
  

With this situation everyone here is really surprised that this cabinet does anything effective and useful, and I was personally surprised that it showed a spine in Brussels.

Robert

PS Yes, I am from Poland and if I see some more Polish or "you forgot Poland" jokes references here, there's going to be some heavy flame ;)

PPS If I mangled some facts, kill me, I don't pay much attention to this heap of excrements that Polish (or any post-communist country for that matter) politics is. But it seems that EU democracy doesn't start any better, ignoring democratic procedures etc...

Transcription of the polish speech

[Anonymous Coward]

Here is the transcription of the speech. Also, there is a website which has an open letter to send greetings to the polish government: thankpoland.info

Merry Christmas Europe !!!! (pfiu! ;)

Re:Quiet...

[Dentharg]

No, there are many Polish /. readers - just not many write comments...

Re:Good thing Germany opposes patents too

[Anonymous Coward]

The Dutch minister in charge of the patent area "love patents". The Dutch parliament explicitly asked him to abstain earlier this year, which he blatantly ignored when he tried to railroad this through the council

Some more info from Poland

[kompiluj]

There is an article in one of polish most important newspapers, the Gazeta Wyborcza.
This article claims, that one of the forces behind Mr Marcinski's mission was polish ex-Prime Minister Professor Jerzy Buzek, currently in European Parliament.
Sadly, the same article informs us that probably Poland will accept the directive in January, under the presidency of Luxembourg. Polish diplomats are afraid that voting against the directive at this late stage would endanger polish interest in other fields, where Poland fears that other countries would act similarly, withdrawing already voiced approvals. Example of such field is the REACH package. Nonetheless Mr Jerzy Buzek and Mr Adam Gierek will try to make some amendments to the directive that would clarify that software is not patentable.
So, we won a battle, but war is probably lost anyway - we can only try to limit the scale of our defeat.
The link to the article [in Polish]
Unfortunately you don't have Polish->English option in babelfish.altavista.com

Re:Honest Politician

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, he has got master's degree in mathematics and worked as a computer programmer, so he knows the real side of the issue. He doesn't look like a regular career politician. http://www.emcis2004.hu/dokk/main/emc/conference/p roceedings/cv/w_marcinski.html

Thank Poland at this website

[tetrode]

http://thankpoland.info/

Mark