Slashdot Mirror
EU Patent Examiners Warn Parliament Will Have "No Power"
zoobab writes "The Staff Union of the European Patent Organisation sent a letter to the President of the European Parliament, warning that after the EU accedes to the European Patent Convention, there is a risk that the European Parliament would be 'circumvented' as a legislator. The European Patent Organisation is in no way a model of democracy: national patent offices are in power, there is no parliament involved in the decision-making process, and diplomatic conferences are held behind closed doors. There are plans to create a central patent court in Europe, which would operate in a democratic vacuum, not counterbalanced by any legislative assembly, in particular not the European Parliament. Such a central patent court could also validate software patents via caselaw (as the German Supreme Court recently did with the Microsoft FAT patent). And Microsoft, IBM, and SAP are lobbying in Brussels not to reopen consideration of the software patent directive."
The United Patent Litigation System replaces the EPLA. The official justifications are that it will decrease bureaucracy and costs. As a side effect (which is the real motivation of some pushers), it will push aside the European Parliament (which threw out swpats in 2005), and give more power to the European Patent Office (which approves almost as much as the USPTO does). More details:
Expert in software patents or patent law? Contribute to the ESP wiki!
The pursuit of software patents is teh pursuit of fraud and public deception.
abstraction physics application (including software)is a human right and duty.
Beware of software patent pursuers bearing gifts.
It's probably easy to figure out where I personally stand, given that I founded and ran the European NoSoftwarePatents campaign and that I also opposed the original proposal named EPLA (European Patent Litigation Agreement). Nevertheless I tried my best to give both sides of the argument fair and accurate representation of their statements and views on my blog.
There are indeed reasons to be concerned about a drift toward software patents in Europe, not only at the legislative level but also in terms of judicial decisions. In the past, the highest German court in such matters applied tough tests such as the controllable-forces-of-nature criterion to distinguish software patent applications from technical inventions. However, a few weeks ago it upheld one of Microsoft's FAT patents, as this slashdot article also mentions. As I explained on my blog, this could be but need not be a "FATal patent ruling". The detailed decision must be analyzed once available in order to understand whether the ruling related to the question of patentable subject matter. It's possible that it was only about inventiveness/prior art, given that the relevant court is an appeals court to which typically only certain (but very rarely all) aspects of a case are referred. In that case, the appeals court would not have been allowed to comment on non-referred issues (no matter how striking those might have been). Patent attorneys in Europe often try not to raise the question of patentable subject matter in their appeals because they would bite the hand that feeds them if they achieved rulings restricting the scope of patentable subject matter. They generally prefer to make invalidation cases on such grounds as "not inventive [as compared to prior art]", "not new [due to prior art]", "not sufficiently disclosed".
Another example of software patents that are already (unfortunately) quite enforceable in Europe are multimedia codec patents, such as MP3 and MP4 patents. It's become an annual ritual at CeBIT that dozens of confiscations of "pirated product", of which MP3 players are probably the largest group, take place on the first day of the show. I mentioned this in a recent blog post on multimedia patents.
While I appreaciate the links and information. I even more appreaciate the fact that someone finally said what as needed (and was heard).
As a patentholder (no, hardware, not software), I can vouch for the fact that a centralized european patent office is sorely needed. Currently, getting a patent in all of europe depends on first finding a patent office that WILL grant you the patent (which can be hard because most of 'em sit on their arse saying; "Ee dont under stand this technology, it's new to us". Yeah morons, ofcourse it's new, otherwise I wouldn't be patenting it, now would I ?), and then running around to every OTHER patent office in europe and saying "But THEY already gave me the patent rights".
And this is not only difficult, but also expensive and an entry barrier for new technology movers and inventors.
--- To err is human... Am I more human than most ?
For those who are interested in what kinds of initiatives the EU is planning to take in connection with intellectual property rights beyond that new patent and patent court system, here's a summary of a speech by the Commission official driving the "patent reform" effort. Keywords: data retention, ACTA, Digital Agenda, aftermath of Microsoft case, Google Street View, open standards, open content, criminal prosecution of IPR infringers, trademarks, AdWords.
I have spent a fair amount of time in Brussels in recent years, starting with my campaign against software patents in Europe. While I understand what you mean to say with your criticism, I would disagree that the EU is inherently undemocratic, let alone antidemocratic.
The EU is a complex construct: it's neither a federation such as the United States or Germany nor an international organization such as the World Trade Organization. It's an in-between, it's a supranational alliance of countries, and that entails a setup in which the national governments of the EU Member States still wield a lot of power. Otherwise we would have (for better or worse, which is not the question) a system more similar to that of the United States, in which the sovereignty of each state is very limited compared to that of an EU Member State.
The original idea of a united Europe was a peace project. It was not about liberalizing markets, although even that is not necessarily against the interests of citizens. As someone who travels a lot in Europe, I can see some of the benefits that the EU has brought to citizens, such as the cap on mobile phone roaming charges that the EU imposed a few years ago.
The complexity of the EU's structures has the effect that only a limited number of people even understand how decisions are taken. There's probably just a minority of US citizens who know exactly all of the procedural possibilities concerning conciliation between the Senate and the House (such as the "deemed passed" principle that the Democrats were considering at some point to push the healthcare bill through), but at least people in the US will know their senators and probably also their congressmen (for their constituencies). Here in Europe, people generally don't know their MEPs (Members of the European Parliament). The media don't report because Brussels seems so remote, processes are complicated and time-consuming, and even when a legislative decision is taken, it usually takes time before it gets implemented by the Member States (enshrined in national laws) -- two years is the standard period that EU directives allow for that purpose. Most of the problems that people criticize when talking about the EU's "democratic deficit" could be solved by the Fourth Estate (the media), but there's a chicken-and-egg problem because citizens don't know about "Brussels" for lack of media coverage and the media don't report much for lack of interest by their audiences.
I also think one has to acknowledge in all fairness that the European Parliament's powers have been significantly enhanced by the Lisbon Treaty. I can understand if people say it was not enough, but there has certainly been progress, with now pretty much all decisions requiring the support of the Parliament (either through co-decision or assent procedures).
1. Design crippled file system (8.3 filenames)
2. "Invent" "ingenious" fix that fixes the aforementioned flaw somewhat (long filenames)
3. Patent & license. Win.
No "???" here. Only "WTF" and where is our society heading?
No, the main goal have always been further integration and democracy within the Union, however, certain groups who often complain that the EU is undemocratic refuse to let it become more democratic, i.e. Eurosceptics such as the British Conservative party or the UKIP, because apparently a democratic Union would undermine national sovereignty.
"Civis Europaeus sum!"
Long expired
anything that Eu does now have to be approved by the Eu parliament. If parl doesnt approve it, it cant happen.
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