Gregnews invectives against Rocard

The latest GregNews contains lots of invectives against Michel Rocard
and reports about patent attorneys preparing questions to have friendly
MEPs expose Rocard's "ignorance" in JURI. 

--------------------------

!20050430  More gossip about software patents in Europe

    --  Mostly business method patent issues and is litigated in Europe
    --  Another paper - hardware/software equivalence 
    --  Medical patenting in Europe just as confusing as for software
    --  The EP's Rocard - a career socialist bureaucrat
    --  Rocard has trouble defending/explaining his software patent report
    --  Patent term language problems in Europe and at the EPO
    --  PATNEWS reader needs recommendation on EC patent lawyers 

Greg Aharonian
Internet Patent News Service
                              ====================

    -  MOSTLY BUSINESS METHOD PATENT ISSUES AND IS LITIGATED IN EUROPE

[...]

Trading Technologies recently reported that it was issued a patent for
their technology by the European Patent Office, and that they are suing,
amongst others, UK hedge fund manager Man Group.  So it behooves the
Europeans to cleanup these software/business patentability semantic games,
because a) this stuff is readily issuing in Europe, and b) European 
companies are being sued (even if the lawsuits are in the US, it weakens
European companies to not have their own patents on their own turf.) 

[...]

    -  ANOTHER PAPER - HARDWARE/SOFTWARE EQUIVALENCE 


[...]

(if you aren't familiar with VHDL and SystemC, you are completely
unqualified to be involved with software IP policy - Mr. Rocard).    

[...]

    -  MEDICAL PATENTING IN EUROPE JUST AS CONFUSING AS FOR SOFTWARE

Greg,

Excellent comments on disgraceful EP software mess. I realize that's
your area of specialization, but take a look at the seriously muddled
situation regarding medical patents, EPC Art 52(4). Is the invention
Therapeutic? Surgical? Diagnostic?

A long list of convoluted and internally inconsistent appellate decisions
finally convinced the President of the EPC to present some clarifying
(i.e. internally inconsistent) questions to the Enlarged Board of Appeals,
which has been contemplating said questions for a verrrrrrrry long time
now.  Maybe they'll finally realize that the essential element is a ...
technical effect. 

Partly as a result of this nonsense, the European biotech industry is
clearly becoming marginalized. Firms who are determined to be in on the
action have, without exception, established their major R&D efforts in
the US. 

Your comment about medieval language was perfectly apposite. EP
prosecution is systemically dysfunctional; software is merely the most
visibly screwed up area.

                              ====================

    -  THE EP'S ROCARD - A CAREER SOCIALIST BUREAUCRAT


With regards to Mr. Rogard, and his document on EC software patent policy
which you rightly discredit, I thought I would also precise for your
benefit that, far from being a specialist in matters of transnational
intellectual property statutes (a point you made amply well enough), Mr
Rocard happens to be a French career politician (left / socialist party),
the career going back a fair while (1958, I believe) and culminating as
being the French Prime Minister under Mitterand between 1988 and 1991.

The above for your edification, if I may be so presumptuous
(http://pluriel.free.fr/rocard.html - feel free to ask if you'd like any
bits/other translated), and who knows - you may find a use for the info in
further PATNEWS if the occasion arises. Then again, perhaps the kind of
semantic play demonstrated/advocated by Mr Rocard in our particular sphere
of interest merely typifies the ambit of his sole, well-practiced skill as
a old-hat navigator of Brussels corridors: just another crusade in which
to (be seen) politicking.

                              ====================

    -  ROCARD HAS TROUBLE DEFENDING OR EXPLAINING HIS REPORT


Greg,

The Roccard piece is crap.  Some of us here in Europen wrote a bunch of
tough questions which were placed with friendly MEPs at the public 
presentation of Rocard's report and it seems he was really at a loss to
come up with any answers.  This guy is an empty shirt incapable of
understanding more than slogans -- an awful example of what is really
wrong with Europe.  And to think he was Prime Minster of France for a time.
Anyway we brought him down a few notches yesterday.

[...]

--
Hartmut Pilch, FFII.org, Munich Office +498918979927, Brussels +3227396262
Data Processing is not a Field of Technology        http://swpat.ffii.org/
400,000 Votes + 3000 CEOs against Software Patents  http://noepatents.org/