Fwd: 3 x Hurra for Polen: Patentdirektivet RIP?

[Knut Yrvin]

Til orientering: 

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Subject: 3 x Hurra for Polen: Patentdirektivet RIP?
Date: onsdag 17 november 2004, 22:51
From: Rune Strand <Rune.Strand at student.uib.no>
To: efn-listen at ifi.uio.no

Fikk denne i posten av en venn:

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FFII, Internet Society Poland and NoSoftwarePatents.com
Joint Press Release

See http://kwiki.ffii.org/PolandDoesNotSupportCouncilVersionEn
(also links to Dutch, German versions on that page).

Poland Does Not Support Current Proposal
for EU Software Patent Directive

Official statement on government website after cabinet meeting: "Poland
cannot support the text which was agreed upon by the EU Council" -
 Political agreement of May 18th on a proposed directive can no longer
 be formally adopted as the common position of the EU Council

Warsaw, 17 November 2004.  Subsequently to a cabinet meeting, the
 Polish government officially declared yesterday evening that "Poland
 cannot support the text that was agreed upon by the EU Council on May
 18th, 2004" as a proposal for a "directive on the patentability of
 computer-implemented inventions".  Consequently, the EU Council is
 unable to formally adopt that legislative proposal as its common
 position.  Without the support of Poland, those countries that
 supported the proposal in May now fall short of a qualified majority
 by 16 votes.  New voting weights took effect in the EU on the 1st of
 this month.

After extensive consultations with organizations of IT professionals
 and the Polish Patent Office, the Polish cabinet concluded that the
 proposal at hand does not achieve the stated goals of limiting patents
 on software and business methods in Europe.  The Polish government
 explained that it would "definitely" support "unambiguous regulations"
 but not a directive under which the functionality of computer programs
 could be patented.  The EU Commission and various governments of other
 EU member countries claimed that the legislative proposal would not
 allow for the patentability of programs that run on an average
 personal computer.  However, at a meeting hosted by the Polish
 government on the 5th of this month, everyone including
 representatives of the Polish Patent Office, SUN, Novell,
 Hewlett-Packard and Microsoft, as well as various patent lawyers,
 confirmed that the present proposal of the EU Council does make all
 software potentially patentable.

Last week, the permanent representative of the Netherlands to the
 European Union had declared that the Council, which is currently under
 a Dutch presidency, would aim to refer its common position on the
 software patent directive to the European Parliament in mid December. 
 The EU Council will now have to renegotiate the legislative proposal
 instead of being able to formally ratify the invalidated political
 agreement of May 18th.  The formal ratification had been delayed,
 officially due to a shortage of translation resources.

Jan Macek of FFII Poland said: "Countries such as Luxembourg, Latvia,
Denmark and Italy had called for changes similar to the amendments made
 by the European Parliament, but those were rejected by the then-Irish
 presidency.  They now have a chance to propose their amendments again,
 with support from Poland.  That will help bring the directive more in
 line with the European Parliament which took the position of clearly
 disallowing software and business method patents."

Wladyslaw Majewski, president of the Internet Society of Poland,
 emphasized the economic and societal implications of software patents:
 "The questionnable compromise that the EU Council reached in May was
 the biggest threat ever to our economic growth, and to our freedom of
 communication. The desire of the patent system and the patent
 departments of certain large corporations must never prevail over the
 interests of the economy and society at large."

The political agreement of the EU Council had been under heavy
 criticism ever since it was announced on May 18th.  Politicians from
 all parts of the democratic spectrum, small and medium-sized
 enterprises, software developers and economists called on the EU
 Council to reconsider its position. Deutsche Bank Research and
 PriceWaterhouseCoopers had expressly warned of the negative
 consequences to European IT companies, to innovation, and to the
 ability of the EU to achieve the goals set out in its Lisbon Agenda. 
 On July 1st, the Dutch parliament passed a resolution that its
 government change the position of the Netherlands from support to an
 abstention.  On October 21st, all four groups in the German parliament
 spoke out against software patents and the legislative proposal in
 question, and introduced different motions to that effect.


References

The aforementioned statement by the Polish government is available on a
government website:
http://www.kprm.gov.pl/441_12649.htm

An overview of the old and the new set of voting weights in the EU
 Council was published earlier by the NoSoftwarePatents.com campaign:
http://www.nosoftwarepatents.com/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=97 (press
 release) http://www.nosoftwarepatents.com/docs/041101qm.pdf (overview
 and analysis)

About the Foundation for a Free Information Infastructure (FFII)

The FFII is the leading non-governmental organization that opposes the
patentability of software.  It has been mandated by tens of thousands
 of individuals, among them an estimated 3,000 CEOs of companies, to
 represent their interests in the political process on an EU software
 patent directive. For more information, please check out
 http://en.eu.ffii.org/
The website of the Polish representation of FFII:
 http://www.ffii.org.pl/

About Internet Society (ISOC) Poland

For information on ISOC Poland, please check out this Web page:
http://www.isoc.org.pl/

About NoSoftwarePatents.com

For information on the NoSoftwarePatents.com campaign, which is
 independent from FFII, please check out this Web page:
http://www.nosoftwarepatents.com/en/m/about/index.html

Contact Information

For further information, please contact:

Jan Macek
FFII, Poland
miernik at ffii.org
telephone +48-888-299997

Wladyslaw Majewski
ISOC Poland
wladek at isoc.org.pl

Florian Müller
Campaign Manager, NoSoftwarePatents.com
press at nosoftwarepatents.com
telephone +49-8151-651850



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