Euro Patent Restart Demand Repeated by Parliament

sebFlyte writes "ZDNet UK is reporting that the European Parliament's Conference of Presidents has ratified and repeated the demands of the Parliament for the computer-implemented inventions directive to be sent back to the drawing board, even though the Commission has refused to re-start it after previous demands. From the article: "It is not certain that the Commission will comply with the request of the Parliament, nor that it will use the opportunity to draft a good text ... The new Commission is not obliged to follow the Parliament's request and they might still try to keep all options open and ask the Council to adopt the agreement of last May without a new vote, so as to gain even more options for themselves."

Re:would this invalidate the GPL?

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, if the draf is really bad you could always patent the GPL itself :-)

"Method for protecting open source code from intellectual property infringement".

Re:Twats

[stupidfoo]

I think an oversight committee elected by members of Parliment to oversee the members of the unelected commission is clearly in order!

Re:EU structure

[Mournblade]

Even better would be if someone were to make a new "Schoolhouse Rock" video of the process.

Interesting term from TFA:

[SmokeHalo]

Hartmut Pilch, the president of pressure group the Foundation for a Free Information Infrastructure (FFII)...

So Europe has 'pressure groups', while America has lobbyists. Maybe that's our problem -- '**AA lobbyist' sounds too warm and fuzzy. They should be renamed 'motion picture pressure group' or 'recording industry pressure group'. That's got a nice evil ring to it.

Re:EU structure

[Mr_Icon]

Conference of Presidents, Council, Commission, Parliament.... For the poor confused Americans among us, could somebody draw us the European equivalent of the "how a bill becomes law" flow chart? I'm completely lost.

Dear sir:
Thank you for your interest in the political structure of the European Union! To better accommodate your request, we have set up a comission who will meet and discuss the best possible way to handle your inquiry. The committee will hold its first meeting whenever the participating local councils meet to select the representatives needed for the first meeting of the committee.

With kindest regards,
The helpdesk committee

Re:Twats

[AllUsernamesAreGone]

Or, forget about employing yet more bloody civil servants and change the rules so that when Parliament says something the commission has no choice in the matter.

Except that isn't going to happen because civil servants are the very last people to actually let politicians influence government. ... And people thought Yes Minister was cynical...

Re:EU structure

[YU Nicks NE Way]

Hold on! You have not properly consulted the Flemish-speaking Walloons of east central Turkey in the constitution of your helpdesk committee commission selection commission. We will not permit the commission to commit to any commitments without first committing to comunicate with them first!

Re:Interesting term from TFA:

[Carthag]

How about Movie And Film Industry Assoctiotion? :)

Re:EU structure

[Mr_Icon]

Unfortunately, our constitution is still being reviewed by the east-Cypriot Committee on Constituational Approvals, so technically the constitution of which you speak is not yet in effect. We just use a set of rules we jotted down on a napkin while we were out for a croissant snack one day.

In other news

[Dachannien]

In other news, U.S. President George W. Bush strongly urged the European Union to embrace basic human freedoms by abandoning its current dictatorial regime for a representative form of government.

Documentary

[A nonymous Coward]

I thought Yes Minister and Yes Prime Minister were documentaries.