Euro Patent Restart Demand Repeated by Parliament 204
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? (Score:5, Informative)
Re:would this invalidate the GPL? (Score:3, Informative)
if software CAN'T be patented, then couldn't one LEGALLY take that unpatented open source code and make a commercial product out of it
No, because the open source code is still copyrighted. (Patents != Copyright). Patents are more general than copyrights, pplying to ideas rather than realisations (and, please, IANAL - someone speak up if I've missed out/messed up).
What patents bring to the table is the ability for someone to patent a concept (one-click purchasing, say) and then prevent anyone else from implementing something similar.
Re:would this invalidate the GPL? (Score:5, Informative)
Okay I'm from the US (Score:3, Informative)
Is the fear that there are enough votes in the Council that this will pass?
Re:would this invalidate the GPL? (Score:2, Informative)
Re:What the ?????? (Score:5, Informative)
It's like the thing was designed *by*, bureucrats *for* bureaucrats
Well, and I don't mean this in a bad-way, that's pretty much how the EU was set-up - or, more accurately, that's how the fore-runner(s) of the EU were set-up. Six European nations decided to have a coal and steel agreement. One thing led to another, over a long period, and with other nations joining at semi-regular intervals. The decisions were taken by career politicians and bureaucrats. It's comparatively recent that we've even had a parliament, and still more recent that we've actually been permitted to elect the members of said parliament.
Re: EU-civics-101. I'll second that. We - even those of us in Europe - desperately need to know how the hell our continent is run.
Is EU really democratic? (Score:5, Informative)
Nobody wanted this in the first place - except patent lawyers, patent offices and a few large software companies.
Before the directive was proposed by the European Commission, software patents were rejected twice by governments at international diplomat conferences on the change of the European Patent Convention.
Before the directive was proposed the European Commission held a public hearing. 91% of those responding were against software patents. 47% of the rest were patent lawyers and patent offices.
When the European Commission proposed the directive they sent out a press release saying the directive was to make software less patentable (liars!).
The only elected institution in EU is the European Parliament. Here the proposed directive was amended to not allowing unlimited patentability of all software and business metods.
Later the European Counsil amended the directive again, undoing most of the amendments the the Parliament did.
And now the European Commission and the Counsil (both non-elected, but appointed) are pressing to go through with the directive, completely ignoring the rights of the European Parliament.
EU Bureaucracy (Score:1, Informative)
Last time an attempt was made to get the ball rolling on this issue, Polish MEP's rejected it, thus it was pushed back. I mean for christs sake, when a country as insignifant Poland can effectively veto a law as paramount to modern IT and computing as this one, you know somethings wrong with the EU's dealing of legislation.
Re:EU Law Trails? (Score:4, Informative)
The EUROPA site [eu.int] which I found this handy-dandy flowchart [eu.int] on! With that many steps, no wonder it's confusing!
An EU primer (Score:4, Informative)
Re:What the ?????? (Score:5, Informative)
http://europa.eu.int/institutions/index_en.htm [eu.int]
Take a look at the dropdown box in the upper right side of your browser window for different languages.
Re:Yes, you've got a problem over there (Score:3, Informative)
Re:OK, question (Score:5, Informative)
This is a bit like the US legislature. They can pass laws, but the Justice Department can fail to enforce them (or the FCC can ignore them, etc.). If the Executive Branch department fails to respond, they can complain to the President, who can fire people. If the President fails to do anything, they can impeach him. This is, in fact, what happened to Andrew Johnson (backwards; he fired an executive for doing what Congress wanted), although he was acquitted by one vote.
So this is another step with which the Parliament can try to exert influence on the other branches without actually going all the way and using their actual power, which would be enormously disruptive to everything.
Note that the Parliament can also reject the directive on the second reading, but it's difficult and depends on enough MEPs actually showing up that day; if Parliament complains enough beforehand, the Commission is more likely to think that enough MEPs will show up to the vote to kill it, and the less interested they are in pushing the Council's text through (the Commission's mandate is to get some directive passed on software patents, because the current situation is broken, and their job is to get broken situations resolved in some way or other). If it's going to get killed in the second reading, they would rather save face and restart the process; if it's not going to get killed in the second reading, they want to get it done.
Re:would this invalidate the GPL? (Score:4, Informative)
The GPL does not make any distinction between 'commercial' or 'non-commercial' distribution. Any and all distribution must follow the terms of the GPL. Commercial or not doesn't enter the picture.
Don't you know there are commercial linux distributions out there?
And patents and copyrights are completely different forms of protection. You can't patent music. But that doesn't mean it isn't protected by copyright.
Re:What the ?????? (Score:4, Informative)
No, At least not a democratic one.
It's like the thing was designed *by*, bureucrats *for* bureaucrats
That's essentially true.
Also, there's the parliament that is
a) a nursing home for politicians that some national party can't get rid off because of prior achievements or
b) has to move out of sight for a couple of years because of national affairs.
c) Also "parliament" sounds somewhat democratic; but don't give them real power because otherwise they might stop you from getting things done -
like introducing software patents against Europe's interests.
and point me at an online EU-civics 101 tutorial that outlines how the EU government is organized
This [dadalos-europe.org] looks promising (from the "International UNESCO Education Server for Civic, Peace and Human Rights Education").
Also, there is a very short overview [eu.int] on the(?) EU site.
Re:Twats (Score:1, Informative)
Re:EU structure (Score:2, Informative)
So, if a government wants to do something unpopular, they lobby for it in the EU, and then create a Directive. Then they implement that directive in local law, and when the people complain, they blame the EU for it. That allows them to work against the people and for big corporations without taking the blame.
On the other side, having a single currency and free trade of people and goods is really useful, and it does help the economy a lot. You win some you lose some I guess.
Re:it's not that simple (Score:3, Informative)
Here in Denmark, for example, the government is appointed by our Queen. Our queen is the only danish citizen that is not allowed to have a political opinion (at least not publicly), so she is supposed to select the government that is best for Denmark, regardless of politics. Our democratically elected parliament can at any time sack our government with a simple majority vote. The result is that the government our queen appoints has the best possible backing from our parliament.
But there is another problems with the government in Denmark and most (all?) other european countries: Although the government risk being sacked by the parliament, they are not bound by decisions of the parliament on questions of EU policy.
This is why we have this strange situation in Europe where most national parliaments are against software patents, while the EU Council (really the club of governments of the EU countries) is pushing for legalization of software patents.
Re:Calling all Euros (Score:3, Informative)
It's actually even more complicated than that. There are two different "European courts":
It's the former which has ruled on the UK's detention of prisoners without trial.
Re:Yes, you've got a problem over there (Score:3, Informative)
The EU is not, yet, the government of europe. Each member state (UK, France, Poland etc) has their own internal government. Which powers the national governments have delegated in whole or in part to the EU is governed by a series of treaties. These treaties include managing the euro, human rights, environmental law, regional development and trade regulation, off the top of my head. Foreign policy and national taxation are not yet under the EU's purview.
There are five EU institutions, each playing a specific role:
European Parliament (elected by the peoples of the Member States);
Council of the European Union (representing the governments of the Member States);
European Commission (driving force and executive body);
Court of Justice (ensuring compliance with the law);
Court of Auditors (controlling sound and lawful management of the EU budget).
There are also a number of committees that make recommendations on various specifc areas.
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Parliament has three main roles:
It shares with the Council the power to legislate.
It exercises democratic supervision over all EU institutions, and in particular the Commission. It has the power to approve or reject the nomination of Commissioners, and it has the right to censure the Commission as a whole.
It shares with the Council authority over the EU budget and can therefore influence EU spending. At the end of the procedure, it adopts or rejects the budget in its entirety.
The most common procedure for adopting (i.e. passing) EU legislation is "co-decision" (which is what is being used in this software patents case). This places the European Parliament and the Council on an equal footing and the laws passed using this procedure are joint acts of the Council and Parliament. It applies to legislation in a wide range of fields.
On a range of other proposals Parliament must be consulted, and its approval is required for certain important political or institutional decisions.
Parliament also provides impetus for new legislation by examining the Commission's annual work programme, considering what new laws would be appropriate and asking the Commission to put forward proposals.
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The full details of all forms of passing legislation is too large to cut-n-paste, so you might want to check here [eu.int] for the gory details.
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regarding software patents, this is the FFII's take on the matter:
"While the EU Parliament has proposed a clear exclusion of software patents, the Commission and Council have ignored the Parliament's proposal and reinstated the most uncompromisingly pro-patent text in May 2004. However this text does not enjoy the support of a qualified majority of member states. Yet the Council has refused to renegotiate, and is still trying to push the text through. Meanwhile the European Parliament has asked for a restart of the procedure."
Basically, the parliament has already agreed the text of the first draft of this directive in september 2003, but with amendments that effectively blocked software patentability, despite the original draft by the Legal Affairs Committee (JURI) that was heavily pro-patents.
In may 2004, the council were conned into narrowly passing a 'compromise' version of the bill by a pro-patents working party (made up of patent office administrators!) which stripped out the parliament's amendments, and added some meaningless 'protections' that will do nothing.
However, the council's decision is not technically final until it is an A item on their agenda, and is passed. As a B item, it can be amended. Given that several council members have changed their position since may 2004 (changes in government, pressure from national parliaments etc) the pro-patent lobby and commission have so far failed to get the item through a
Re:Okay I'm from the US (Score:3, Informative)
"This is bad"
"We can't hear you"
This is a common process in the EU and is also used for passing many other pieces of stupid law (like the EUCD - our DMCA variant). Countries all go "Oh this is terrible but the EU made us do it" while detailed analysis will reveal that *they* put it through the EU themselves, intentionally, so they could all deny knowledge of it.
The EU has some serious reforms needed. It isn't clear to me at least whether the new EU constitution proposal will achieve that. Its a vast document written in legalese and EU acronyms when what actually needs to happen is a simple document that says "Parliament is soverign"