[IP] Dutch parliament decices to change EU software patent rules
Begin forwarded message:
From: Seva Batkin <seva_batkin@xxxxxxxxxxx>
Date: July 2, 2004 2:36:02 PM EDT
To: dave@xxxxxxxxxx
Subject: Dutch parliament decices to change EU software patent rules
Dave, for IP if u want
Dutch parliament has decided to change its minister’s EU vote on the
software patent issues. We’ll see what the implications will be.
Seva
http://kwiki.ffii.org/NlVote040701En
NlVote040701En
PRESS RELEASE FFII NL-- [ Europe / economy / ICT ]
02/07/04: Dutch Parliament forces Minister Brinkhorst to withdraw
support for software patents directive
Yesterday evening, July 1st, the Dutch Parliament voted to urge
Minister Brinkhorst and Secretary of State van Gennip (Economic
Affairs) to withdraw the Dutch vote in support of the Council of
Ministers' text for the Directive on Software Patents.
The idea of allowing patents on software has been strongly criticized
among SMEs, scientists and consumer organisations. They inhibit
investments in Research and Development and contribute to higher
prices.
This act represents an strong criticism of the Council of the EU's
attempts to introduce broad patentability of software and label it as a
compromise: Minister Brinkhorst, acting on behalf of the Netherlands,
endorsed the Council's current proposal, which not only reiterated the
terms of the European Commission's strongly criticized initial
directive proposal, but went even further, directly rebuffing the clear
stance assumed by the European Parliament, which added amendments on
September 24 2003 which lay down strict limitations and which express
that logical algorithms and the ideas found in software cannot be
patented.
This European Parliament's 1st reading made clear that patents should
only be allowed for industrial inventions (e.g. washing machines) and
would not be made possible for, what patent law calls computer
programs. These limitations were removed in the negotiations between
patent office representatives which were used as the "compromise" by
the Council of the European Union.
The Council endorsed the result of this controversial smoking-room
negotiation which replaced the democratically voted exclusions from the
European Parliament with dummy exclusions which pose no practical
limitation to what patent offices and patent attorneys want. (Which
seems to be a clear signal to empower the EPO to continue it's strongy
criticised US-like patenting practise - e.g. see the Amazon gift
ordering patent).
Earlier, Brinkhorst described the Council proposal to the Dutch
Parliament as a compromise with the European Parliament. In recent
legislative debates, Van Gennip was forced to admit that this was
incorrect information, and attributed it to "an error in the word
processor."
The Dutch Parliament rejected this explanation and today, it adopted
an historic and groundbreaking decision, calling upon Minister
Brinkhorst and van Gennip to withdraw the Netherlands' supporting vote
in the Council of the European Union and convert it to an
abstention(which in effect as voting "no", only the "yes" votes really
count).
This is possible because at the moment the Council of the European
Union only has found an "political agreement" and the formal adotion of
the common position can only take place after the contested text has
been translated into the 20 European languages.
Dutch Parliament demonstrated the active interest which public holds
in the debate over software patents. Dieter Van Uytvanck, spokesman of
FFII Netherlands, stresses the importance of this decision:
This political signal reaches much further than just the Netherlands.
We hope that other European countries that also have their doubts about
the proposal of the Council will also withdraw their support, so that
the current proposal no longer has a majority. The historic precedent
has been set now.
Let this be a lesson to the lawmakers in Brussels: the European
citizens watch you closely. It is much better to take this into account
from the beginning than to get into trouble later.
Reports of earlier debates are available at:
• http://kwiki.ffii.org/NlParlDebate0426En
• http://kwiki.ffii.org/NlGovLttrResp0422En
========================================================================
==
Contact
========================================================================
==
Wiebe van der Worp wiebe@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx tel. +31 6 28 195 808
Ir. Arend Lammertink: alam@xxxxxxx tel. +31 6 5425 6426
Dieter Van Uytvanck: dieter@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx tel. +32 499 16 70 10
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