Euro Patent Restart Demand Repeated by Parliament

sebFlyte writes "ZDNet UK is reporting that the European Parliament's Conference of Presidents has ratified and repeated the demands of the Parliament for the computer-implemented inventions directive to be sent back to the drawing board, even though the Commission has refused to re-start it after previous demands. From the article: "It is not certain that the Commission will comply with the request of the Parliament, nor that it will use the opportunity to draft a good text ... The new Commission is not obliged to follow the Parliament's request and they might still try to keep all options open and ask the Council to adopt the agreement of last May without a new vote, so as to gain even more options for themselves."

Comments

It's highly worrying...

[delta_avi_delta]

...when a body which purports to be democratic does not listen to those who represent the people. We have spoken, we have shouted, we have sent you nasty emails. If the bill gets carried, it will indicate that the European Union is designed to give people the appearance of having democratic power with the parliament, while the real power resides with commission, who seem emminantly influenced by big business.

OK, question

[Anonymous Coward]

If the commish ignored the last demand, why would they pay attention to this one? Or is this just for the parliament to make their objections absolutely clear?

Also, question: Is the EU parliament in the end going to be, or are they right now, as pissed off about this as Slashdot seems to be? I mean, whether the parliament cares about patents or not, you'd think. In the U.S. if a branch of government got outright snubbed like this they'd probably wind up doing everything in their power to kill the idea of software patents forever, even if they didn't really care about software patents, just out of spite

Disgraceful FUD on BBC

[hazee]

The BBC coverage of this issue states that "The open source movement, of which Linux is the flagbearer, eschews notions of property and instead allows anyone to examine and tinker with the inner workings of software."

As a BBC license payer, I'm incensed that they could be spreading such FUD. Since when has Linux "eschewed the notion of property"?

Just because the open source community is vehemently opposed to software patents, doesn't mean that they don't support the "notion of property". Without such notions as copyright for instance, the GPL would be impossible.

Re:Disgraceful FUD on BBC

[hazee]

My complaint to the BBC:

As a BBC license payer, I'm appalled by the factual inaccuracy in the "EU software patent law faces axe" article.

The statement is made that "The open source movement, of which Linux is the flagbearer, eschews notions of property and instead allows anyone to examine and tinker with the inner workings of software."

This is nonsense, verging on the libellous. The open source movement has no such stance. Even minimal fact checking would quickly reveal that the Gnu Public License, under which much of today's open source software, including Linux, is released, depends fundamentally on the protections and rights granted by copyright.

The concept that the open source movement seeks to destroy any sense of property is precisely the sort of scare story being pushed by large computer manufacturers in their attempt to railroad the software patents directive through the European parliament.

I expect better from a supposedly neutral and unbiased news organisation.

This is exactly why further integration is needed

[Nicolas MONNET]

Anti-EU people take this example to denigrate the integration process, but in fact it shows that MORE integration is necessary.

For instance the parliament still has little power, but without it this directive would have been passed months ago. Without EU at all, it would have been passed years ago under pressure from US-based megacorporations.

I'd say that even though the situation is dangerous, it shows that the European parliament is perfectly doing its job and representing the will of the European people, and counterbalancing the ivory power that is the Commission. In particular, kudos to Michel Rocard, former French Prime Minister and one of the main forces in this legislative fight. A friend of mine met him when he was just starting to discover the issue; and he was pleasantly suprised to find how he listened to anti patent arguments and quickly acquired knowledge and decided to act.

Re:it's not that simple

[idlake]

You're confusing two issues: how your national government is brought into power and how that reflects on the European Commission.

You have a system by which you get a government and, for better or for worse, that government represents you. One of the things that government does is represent your interests in international bodies, including the EU. If you aren't happy with the way you get your government, that's a national problem. You could guillotine your queen and have a revolution, for example. However, most people do actually consider Denmark a democracy. Furthermore, I suspect your government would actually be free to ask the people and hold a referendum on its Commissioners.

If your government isn't acting the way your parliament wants it to, it sounds like your parliament has the option of dissolving it (I don't know how Danish government works), but apparently it doesn't care enough about this issue to take that step. That's not unusual, and it's by design: democracy does not mean that the majority, or even the majority of representatives, gets their will on every issue. It's similar in the US, where the Senate and the House are two separate bodies that control each other, and the executive branch has a lot of separate powers, and they aren't all always consistent with each other.

Historically, the Commission makes sense; giving lots of power to the European Parliament overnight would have been insane since people had no idea of how the politics would work out, while the Commission grew out of the mechanisms all member states were already using for interacting. Again, I don't like many of the decisions the Commission has been making, and it sounds like it's time to give more power to the European Parliament. But the fact that things are the way they are isn't the result of some insane European bureaucracy or anti-democratic movement, it's the prudent and natural way to achieve what the European Union is trying to achieve. European Parliament could easily have turned out to be a bunch of anti-democratic hoodlums and kooks, in which case we'd all be grateful that we didn't hand over power over our lives to them.

This is not correct

[tkrotchko]

"Without protection for IP, including patents, the value of software falls to zero"

Software patent have existing for about 10 years (more or less). So are you saying the economic value of software before 1994 was zero?

I'll assume I don't have to point to the multitude of examples that prove this to be false?

Re:Profit Anyone?

[mOdQuArK!]

Actually, history indicates the exact opposite.

The U.S. grew its industry rapidly by running roughshod over attempts by the European countries to control trade secrets & other forms of intellectual property. The U.S. wouldn't be where it is today economically if it had taken European whining about patents, copyright & such, seriously. It's only recently, as the primary economic superpower, that Americans suddenly think it's a good idea for everyone to let them control the flow of ideas & technology throughout the world.

Software & business model patents are being used to crush competition, rather than provide any kind of innovation for society's benefit. True entrepreneurs make money by providing desired goods & services, not by getting laws passed which let them earn money through extortion.