FFII/SW Patents: European Democracy Day 2004-09-24

Friday, September 24, is the first anniversary of the plenary
vote by the European Parliament that stopped the EU Commission's
push towards unlimited patentability. The Parliament also
reaffirmed the limits imposed by the European Patent Convention,
and expressed the will and the deliberate position of the
democratic (and "economic") majority in the text of the
directive.

The European Parliament was the first institution in the path of
EU legislation that was not dominated by players from the patent
establishment.  It was the first institution that took the
concerns of more than 250,000 petitioners (currently around
350,000), thousands of European SMEs, a number of recent economic
studies as well as the opinions of dozens of famous scientists
into account.

The European Parliament fulfilled its task of democratic
decision-making so thoroughly that subsequently the patent
operatives from the Council working group had to reveal their
exactly opposing intent.  They did so with unprecedented
effrontery, by removing all essential amendments introduced by
the Parliament, adding extremist counter amendments, and using a
very dubious voting procedure for their counter proposal on May
18, 2004, in order to produce the semblance of a qualified
majority.

We ask you to show your support for the position adopted by the
EP by announcing September 24 as a Day of European Democracy. You
can do this by including a hyperlinked banner on your web
page(s).  See http://en.eu.ffii.org/sections/eu_democracy_day for
details.

If your national government is still officially supporting the
Council version of the directive, you could also use this event
to renew contacts to your national MPs, request personal
meetings, and ask them to put a debate on the EU software patent
directive on the national parliament's agenda.

No government should support the Council's anti-Parliament course
without legitimation by its national parliament. Every little
step towards this goal has substantial permanent value.  The EU
Democracy Day page mentioned above contains some related
pointers.

Yours sincerely,

Holger Blasum, Bernhard Kaindl, Christian Cornelssen
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FFII - Foundation for a Free Information Infrastructure
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* Brussels Conference 9-10 Nov 2004:
  "Regulating Knowledge, Costs, Risks, and Models of Innovation":
  http://plone.ffii.org/events/2004/test
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