EU Software Patents: Motion in the EU Parliament to Restart the Legislative Process

-------- Original Message --------
Subject: [uk-parl] EU Software Patents: motion in the European
Parliament forrestarting the entire legislative process
Date: Mon, 10 Jan 2005 13:32:30 +0100
From: Henrion Benjamin <[email protected]>
To: [email protected]

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  EU Software Patents: motion in the European Parliament
       for restarting the entire legislative process
===========================================================

61 MEPs from 13 different countries introduce motion -- Restart
of legislative process requested on grounds of new elections, EU
extension, and changed circumstances -- Procedural step would
also represent "a face-saving exit strategy for the EU Council"

Brussels (10 January 2005). The EU's legislative process on a
software patent directive continues to be eventful. Just before
Christmas, the Polish government surprisingly delayed a decision
in the EU Council. Strong support is now building up in the
European Parliament for an initiative to restart the entire
legislative process. 61 MEPs (Members of the European
Parliament), from 13 different countries and 4 political groups,
have introduced a motion to ask the EU Commission for
resubmitting a legislative proposal, which means to go back to
square one. The group of signatories is led by former Polish
prime minister Jerzy Buzek, and includes other high-profile
politicians, among them three vice presidents of the European
Parliament, multiple members of group and committee leaderships,
and a former EU Commissioner. The complete list was published
today on www.NoSoftwarePatents.com, a pan-European campaign
Website.

The EU Commission had already highlighted the possibility of
parliament restarting this legislative process in a statement
published on its Website last summer. In this scenario, the EU
Parliament would have a new first reading, and the EU Council
would again be free to negotiate a "Common Position" on the
directive. The EU Council could still change its position in the
ongoing process because it has not formally adopted it yet, but
countries are now informally bound to a political agreement of 18
May 2004.

"A majority of today's MEPs didn't get to participate in the
first reading in 2003, and the governments of the new member
states were barely finding their seats in the Council last May",
said Florian Mueller, manager of the NoSoftwarePatents.com
campaign. "This issue is controversial, complex, and so very
critical to Europe's future. A total restart is also a
face-saving exit strategy for the Council, which is caught
between a rock and a hard place because it would either have to
depart from an unwritten diplomatic code and renegotiate its
position now, or it would have to decide against all democratic
principles."

Mueller pointed out that his campaign also strives for a maximum
of legal certainty but that he is "absolutely unaware of any
problems for legitimate patent holders in the current situation",
so he believes Europe should assign a higher priority to finding
the right decision than to rushing this process. "If there is any
category of patents that are difficult to enforce in Europe right
now, then we're talking about those shady software patents that
nobody says he wants and that some say don't even exist." The
European Patent Convention explicity excludes patents on computer
programs, but an estimated number of more than 30,000 such
patents have been granted in Europe nonetheless.

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Internet Addresses of Relevant Documents

Motion text:
http://www.ffii.org/~jmaebe/reso/resolution_55_4.pdf

Lists of signatories (by country and by political group):
http://www.nosoftwarepatents.com/docs/050106restartsign_nat.pdf
http://www.nosoftwarepatents.com/docs/050106restartsign_grp.pdf

Commented version of EU Commission's statement on restart
possibility:
http://www.nosoftwarepatents.com/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=281

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Procedural Background Information

Under Rule 55 of its Rules of Procedure, the European Parliament
may request a restart of a legislative process under certain
circumstances. That request can come from the committee in charge
(first paragraph of the rule), or alternatively result from a
plenary vote (fourth paragraph). The European Parliament is
looking at both procedural options here.

The motion bases the request for a restart upon two facts:

- New European elections have taken place since the original
first reading in the European Parliament in 2003. Due to the
elections in June and the EU extension in May of 2004, a majority
of today's MEPs did not get to participate in the first reading.

- The motion also stresses that "there have been substantial
changes in the nature of the subject to which the proposed
directive relates". Either one of the two reasons would be
sufficient on its own to invoke Rule 55.

Restarting a legislative process after elections routinely
happens in various parliaments, such as the German Bundestag. The
technical term for the principle is "discontinuity". In the
current legislative term of the European Parliament, the
"directive on the patentability of computer-implemented
inventions" would be the first, and quite likely the only, case
in which the principle of discontinuity is applied.

On the subject of changed circumstances, the motion particularly
cites patent-related implications to IT infrastructure decisions
by public administrations. Last summer, the city of Munich had
temporarily suspended its Linux migration project over patent
infringement fears. The project was resumed, but the city
administration was advised by a local law firm to demand that its
IT vendors and service-providers hold the city harmless of patent
litigation costs and indemnities. To the dismay of the city
administration, this would preclude small and medium-sized
businesses from successfully bidding for contracts. Furthermore,
on November 18th, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer had warned Asian
governments that they would face patent litigation if using the
Linux operating system instead of Microsoft's Windows product.

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About the NoSoftwarePatents.com Campaign

The NoSoftwarePatents.com campaign was launched on October 20th
in initially 12 languages and is supported by three IT companies
(1&1, Red Hat, and MySQL AB). More information on the campaign is
available on the campaign Web site.

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Contact Information

For further information concerning this announcement or the
NoSoftwarePatents.com campaign, please contact:

Florian Mueller
Campaign Manager, NoSoftwarePatents.com
telephone +49 (8151) 651850
[email protected]

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