[Fwd: [Patents] New Council Document & Brussels Conference 2004-04-14]

(Forwarded from the Patents list)

-------- Original Message --------
Subject: [Patents] New Council Document & Brussels Conference 2004-04-14
Date: Thu, 18 Mar 2004 14:36:14 +0100 (CET)
From: Hartmut Pilch <[email protected]>
To: [email protected]

I just wrote a variant of the following letter template to a member of the
European Parliament (MEP).  It tells a lot of news and some readers might
find it worth adapting to their purposes.  Please send me any adapted
version in whatever lantguage that you might have sent to your MEP.

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

Dear MEP,

The Irish Council presidency is again secretly advancing the interests of
the patent business against those of software delveloppers, business
people and users:

 Document Number: 7230/04
 Title: Proposal for a Directive of the European Parliament and of the 
 Council on the patentability of computer-implemented inventions - 
 Consolidated/annotated text Content:  (!) N/A Interinstitutional File: 
 2002/0047(COD) Subject Matter: PI 30
 CODEC 347 Document Category: WORKING DOCUMENT Originator: Presidency 
 Addressee: Working Party on Intellectual Property (Patents) Document 
 Date: 17-03-2004 Date of Meeting:   Archive Date: 17-03-2004 Document 
 Language: EN

Can you get access to this document?

The predecessor of this document is analysed at

	http://swpat.ffii.org/papers/europarl0309/cons0401/

After years of sad experience, we have no trust whatsoever in the EU
Council's "Working Party on Intellectual Property (Patents)", i.e.  the
group of people that is, in another organisational setting, running the
European Patent Office (EPO).

Their strategy seems to be to either kill the directive project or hand
the EPO a blanko cheque with help of a new parliament.

2. FFII is planning to launch a campaign in various European countries, to
   be kicked off by an event in the European Parliament, room AG2, on
   wednesday April 14th, with scientists, software entrepreneurs and, in
   the afternoon, journalists.

	http://plone.ffii.org/events/2004/bxl04/

We would be very happy if we could announce that you and/or your group are
speaking at this event or in other ways associated with it.

3. We would also be very happy if you could allow us to list you as a
   signator of

	Call for Action
	http://swpat.ffii.org/papers/europarl0309/demands/

All the above suggestions are of course independent one of the other.

Maybe you could also suggest some other people in your group or in your
country's government to whom we should directly write.

Let me again express my deep gratitude for your and your group's courage
in defending the public interest and wish you strength and success with
your ongoing work!

Yours sincerely

-- 
Hartmut Pilch, FFII & Eurolinux Alliance              tel. +49-89-18979927
Protecting Innovation against Patent Inflation	     http://swpat.ffii.org/
300,000 votes 2000 firms against software patents    http://noepatents.org/