EU Software Patents Dead Again

Joe Blakesley writes "Heise is reporting (in German) that the JURI (legal division of the European Parliament who tend to be more pro-EPO) have voted to invoke Rule 55 for a total restart of the software patents process (going back through the anti-swpat Parliament with a totally new directive) following attempts by the EC to get their directive through by the back door. This is an important victory for democracy and it means we can no longer say that the JURI is out. Also see Groklaw's story."

This shows the truth.....

[Anonymous Coward]

This only shows that the U$ is on their way to fasicst/communist copyright rule inposed by the dictatorship of MPAA/RIAA.

It shows that Freewill and Free thinking is still present in the EU and has not been polluted by the deranged thoughts of MPAA/RIAA and others with similar agenda.

I it obvious that soon the U$A will be something similar to the world in Orwells 1984.
And im not blaming Bu$h, but the coperate infiltrators in the senate.

Opportunity for informed debate

[saphena]

This will give the EU a much needed opportunity to consider the issues properly with the benefit of major campaigning forces on BOTH sides of the arguments instead of just the big boys arguing for unlimited patentability.

Re:This shows the truth.....

[Suchetha]

And im not blaming Bu$h, but the coperate infiltrators in the senate.

Actually the greatest blame lies elsewhere..

The American public are more impressed by a slick PR campaign than by where their pols stand on the issues.. they are willing to vote someone in on name recognition [ca.gov] than on a real knowlege of who that person is and what they stand for.. when you need megabucks to pay for a campaign that you may win or lose, then you have to whore yourself out to the highest bidder, and this means the megacorps.. (in my country it's a tad different, they get in and then plunder the treasury.. but the slick campaign remains)

so its our fault. after all, no one is FORCING us to vote those idiots in. if people were willing to vote responsibly, then there would be no need for slick campaigns, only a willingness to actually work for the good of the people.. until then power to the sheeple!!!

Suchetha

Thanks so much,

[avocade]

everyone in the EU (and around the world, I'm sure) who helped in driving this decision through. I was a bit worried at the end, but this shows that democracy can still work.

I sent a handful of faxes in myself to some of the more critical MEP's, and some emails to the Swedish government explaining my position. While that was the most I could do with my resources and time, it would certainly be interesting to see how far other people went to further this cause :)

great victory

[cg0def]

Patents are necessary however not in the state and form that they are now. I personally belive that there should be a databas of who invented what however, there is no way that a coumpany should be allowed to charge anybody for using technology that the first company owns just the pattent for. Sure if you make your money off of something that you invented then you would like other companies that use the same technology to pay you. However, if you no longer use a pattent or you are a company that goes arround and buys patents for profit this sux. I think that companies whose treat patents as assets should be illegal. Pattents exist to protect a company's means of income and not to create ways of legasing mafia like behavior.

I really hope that one day patents become just a registry of who invented what when ... a true open source society.

Sure it is.

[Max Threshold]

F/OSS may very well dominate the marketplace by the time this bill comes back around. If that's the case, then every business and government that relies on F/OSS will be lobbying against it. It'll never pass.

Re:This shows the truth.....

[shaitand]

If someone manages to be governor it DOES however mean they are a puppet. Schwarenagger isn't competent, his puppeteers are.

Re:Reassuring

[prodangle]

no matter if you are a free software believer, an open source pragmatist, or a proprietary zealot

What if you just like to use what you regard as the best and most economical tool for the job?

I strongly disagree with Software patents, but I wouldn't put myself into any of your 3 categories - not everyone bases their software choices on political views.

Sorry to be a pedant :)

Re:Maybe a victory for Democracy

[alexwcovington]

European national sovereignty has been on the way out since the end of the Second World War, and with good reason. Wouldn't you agree that it's a lot more fun and easy to live when London and Berlin aren't carpet bombing each other? The whole point of the European Union is to establish a tolerant, comprehensive framework for multilateral coordination of tasks common to each nation. This naturally includes patent law. I'm sure the United Kingdom can continue to regulate the length of bagpipe drones if it so desires.

Re:Not dead!

[Anonymous Coward]

The later they attempt to pass it, the better for us: as open source is becoming more popular, many entities (governments) will become dependent on it, hopefully some day govts will get enough dependent to not let to pass any legislation which could harm FOSS. When your infrastructure works mainly on open source and does not cause many technical problems (virii etc.) or costs (forced upgrades, expensive support from foreign supplier etc.), you are free to alter it any way you want, all money spent on support come back into your region because supplier is a local firm etc. switching back to propiertary solutions seems to be a crazy idea.

Re:I'm wondering what this says about the EU itsel

[Anonymous Coward]

You got that exactly right.

Now I've said it before and I'll say it again I think there is some misunderstanding in other parts of the world in regards to what is happening in Europe.

Europe; the EU is a fundementally about 2 things. a kind of post WWII guilt and establishing a new super power (particularly with collapse of the Soviet Union)

As the Europe 'project' has festered on it has become more and more of a nonsense (it already was) and is literally about lots of unelected cronies and toads getting huge sums of money to shape and introduce laws and regulations that they have no remit to be involved in at all and trying to establish control and take sovereinty (sp) from those member state countries.

Seperately but related the Euro is a flop and has damaged several economies, notably Germany and his been an excuse to drive up prices across the board.

It is only a matter of time before some so called 'enthusiastic' member states get cold feet and want out of the whole project.

Like the USSR Europe is seeking to absorb more new countries all the time.

People (especially in the US) might look fondly toward how Europe treats the Software Patents issue and other related subjects, but understand that any little thing that Europe does that seems good, there are 20 things which are imposed on member countries against the will of those people that are bad by completely incompetent and corrupt Eurocrats that have no right to be interfering in how other countries run their affairs. Yes I said corrupt and I stand by it. The whole European project is ridiled with corruption.

The strength of Europe has been and always will be the individual member states, a federal Europe is a disaster for everyone.

Re:Thanks so much,

[jez99]

Well, I kept tuned txs to the FFII, and emailed with very polite and personalized texts to both the two spanish members of the JUI (One was against patent, the other was in favor of it). I also posted in the official web page. That was not too much, but, you see, I had this thinking yesterday. Why is it so important what 'media' says? (newspaper and so on), and why does politicians care about it?? It is not because of the 'power' of the media. They don't have any by themselves. The can't lobby, they don't use to have much money, neither contacts. Their power is based on the people who read them, because they can change their mind. And why politicians are afraid people change it's mind? becaouse that people may not vote them, or may talk to another about it, etc ... So, If you post a politician, you're getting over the whole 'media-in-the-middle' proccess. One always expect the media to cover one's concerns, in the hope that that can change it. Anyway, if one just post it straight to the politician, he may get the same result .... Whoa! sorry for this amount of 'nothing'.

Re:Just because the Brits object, it's not wrong!

[Anonymous Coward]

"Britain for one cannot afford splendid isolation any more. It's as simple as that. That doesn't make the EU a great choice. It's just the lesser of two evils."

It's not an issue of isolation. There is no way of presenting a good case for further European integration to the UK population because there simply isn't one. That's why Blair doesn't really want to get too involved into the benefits other than glossing over them.

What's he going to say ? "Join me everyone, sign away your Sovereignty to corrupt bungling Eurocrats and you will be happy"

Britain needs to have confidence in it's postion that is is somewhat aloof from mainland Europe and be very pleased with that position. It's needs to move away from European red tape and regulation.

After all, where WILL it end ? Europe (heavily lobbyed by M$) suddenly announce they want to introduce a chip that is implanted into your brain and saves all your cookies and web info, and that if we don't do this we won't be competitive....

no thanks

Back on topic:

[ehack]

M$ and friends have vast amounts of money. By prolonging the process of debate the parliament keeps the meter running and members will get some real backhanders.

Re:great victory

[pesc]

Pattents exist to protect a company's means of income

I disagree.

Patents are monopolies handed out by the government. The original reason we allow the monopolies is that we want the technology behind the patent to be exposed rather than kept secret. This way, the public gets a benefit from handing out the monopoly, the knowledge in technology can advance.

Since I'm pro free market, I'm very much against monopolies. I would rather have the companies compete. The company that can produce the best products win, in an open competition. We should not pass laws to protect the income of companies. If they can't earn it, too bad! That said, I can tolerate patents if they are truly inventive. And helps progress. Tolerate!

However, when it comes to software we need to understand that it is not technological but mathematical. Software is written, not manufactured. And since it is written we have copyright protection for it. You protect cars and machinery by patents, not copyright. You protect films, books and software by copyrights, not patents. With software patents, the author of software texts is denied his right to publish his independently created works.

Re:Opportunity for informed debate

[Baki]

Indeed, this fight is not won before the whole and aberrant concept of "intellectual property" is history. Only when any person propagating this concept is recognized for what they really are, namely enemies of civilization and humanity, and those are put in jail instead of the ones fighting this evil, I shall have peace.

Re:This shows the truth.....

[miskatonic alumnus]

A couple of points:

To vote responsibly, you have to be aware of, and have accurate information about what the real issues are. Then you have to think critically about the issues before casting your ballot. It turns out that our schools aren't doing their job of training people to think for themselves and analyze an argument. IMHO this is the most important job of a teacher. Before we castigate the parents, be aware that they came from the same system.

The other point is that the power mongers do their damndest to keep critical information out of reach. After a hard day at work, and an evening spent helping the kids with their homework, making dinner and what all, who has the time to do actual research? Most people are going to flip on the TV, tune in to the FOX, NBC, whatever, nightly news, and consider themselves informed.

Gazeta Wyborcza "lies"

[sayret]

Kids!
This article contains FUD. Polish govt. didnt withdraw its opposition! An Author of this "lame" article did not have any official statement from PL Gov. So blame lame magazine for FUD :)
greetz!
Tom
www.rychlicki.net [rychlicki.net]

more news from outlaw.com

[N3wsByt3]

An influential European Parliamentary committee voted yesterday to ask the Commission to send the proposed Directive on the patentability of computer-implemented inventions back to Parliament for a first reading.

Simon Gentry, founder of the pro-patent Campaign for Creativity, wrote a letter to his supporters today: "The assault on patents - based on a deliberate distortion of the facts - has, in effect, won."

Gentry added that he is considering winding up the lobbying group. "Set against the apparently limitless resources - both human and financial - of the anti-patent lobby, the cause seems lost."

The current draft has changed radically since the Parliament first considered it, while the membership of the Parliament and the European Union itself has also altered. These are reasons for a restart, say many MEPs.

The draft Directive, often known as the Software Patents Directive, has been on the verge of approval by the Council of Ministers since May, when European Trade Ministers rejected amendments made to the draft by the European Parliament. Some MEPs expressed fears that the wording of the Directive risks bringing to Europe the more liberal regime of software and business method patenting that exists in the US.

Progress on the draft Directive then stalled, as political manoeuvring kept the proposals off the Council agenda, where it was due to be included as an "A" item, being one that is voted through without discussion.

The Polish Government has been influential in delaying the vote, taking advantage of new voting weights that came into force on 1st November. Denmark also appears to have disrupted progress of the draft in the run up to its Parliamentary elections on 8th February.

Once successfully rubber-stamped, the Directive is due to be sent back to the European Parliament for a second reading. But some MEPs argued that the legislative progress should be restarted instead, allowing the enlarged Parliament to give full consideration to the issues, instead of rushing it through in the three-month timescale that a second reading allows.

The issue came to a head yesterday in a meeting of the Parliament's legal affairs committee (JURI).

In what has been described as a heated debate, Charlie McCreevy, European Commissioner for Internal Market and Services, explained that the Council of Ministers had now reached consensus and that the draft was due to be re-instated as an A point at a forthcoming Council meeting.

Committee members reacted to the news by voting by 19 votes to two in support of a motion to ask the Commission to send the proposals back to the Parliament for a first reading, effectively restarting the process.

The Commission does not have to comply with the request. It may instead continue with the existing process, in the knowledge that once the Directive is put to the Parliament for a second reading, consensus is unlikely to be achieved.

According to UK Labour MEP Arlene McCarthy, it is more likely that the whole process will now be delayed for up to six months, in order to assess the impact of the legislation. "Under the circumstances this is the best solution," she said.

Austrian JURI member Eva Lichtenberger said: "The Legal Affairs Committee's initiative is a good beginning, but does not yet offer a happy ending to the software patents story."

She added: "Today's courageous decision introduces the possibility of a better solution. I am very happy that we now have an opportunity to prevent software patenting and to obtain a better directive that will benefit the whole of the industry. We may now be able to stop market giants - aided by an American-style patenting law - from forcing innovators and SMEs out of the market."

But Simon Gentry of the Campaign for Creativity believes that the Committee vote "will open the way to a deluge of anti-IP amendments that will probably result in the final stripping away of IP protection for the IT sector."

He continued: "At the very least we

Re:This shows the truth.....

[CmdrGravy]

That whole interview is very interesting to read today. Particualry the comments by Mr Blair that if Saddam were to agree to more weapons inspections there wouldn't be any need for a war.