Re: An Open Letter On Software Patents and EU Election (fwd)

On Sat, 2004-06-05 at 20:25, James Heald wrote:
> but seems primarily drawn to unhappy compromise -- "any directive rather 
> than no directive", and "no point in backing anything which won't 
> achieve a qualified majority".
> 

This page from Hartmut-central (on
http://swpat.ffii.org/papers/eubsa-swpat0202/plen0309/kond/index.en.html
written before the vote) may be helpful in providing counter-arguments.


> It is better to have no directive than a bad directive. It may well be
> that the EPO will then continue to grant software and business method
> patents against the letter and spirit of the European Patent
> Convention, but these patents will be less enforcable before national
> courts than ever, and even EPO has shown some responsiveness to the
> public criticism. ...
> 
> Threats that the Commission and Council will reject the directive if
> the PSE/Kauppi/Greens/UEN/EDD amendments prevail, as have been uttered
> recently by Frits Bolkestein and earlier by Arlene McCarthy, once more
> cast doubt on the proponents' commitment to its stated goals of
> clarification and "harmonisation". The study written for the
> Parliament by Bakels and Hugenholtz explains why the Commission
> proposal fails on these goals. The JURI draft is no better. While
> Bolkestein is suggesting that the Parliament's amendments may run
> counter to TRIPs, the Commission's proposal itself, by introducing a
> (bogus) requirement of "technical contribution in the inventive step"
> deviates from both TRIPs and the EPC. It is the European Commission
> itself which has failed to concretise Art 27ff TRIPs, and many of the
> amendments, such as 20, 50, 45 and 107, are trying to fix this. As
> soon as it is amended enough so as to achieve this aim, the directive
> deserves to be approved. 
>