Dutch parliament decices to change EU software patent rules

[David Farber <dave () farber net>]

Begin forwarded message:

From: Seva Batkin <seva_batkin () hotmail com>
Date: July 2, 2004 2:36:02 PM EDT
To: dave () farber net
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 () vrijschrift org tel. +31 6 28 195 808

 Ir. Arend Lammertink: alam () home nl tel. +31 6 5425 6426

 Dieter Van Uytvanck: dieter () vrijschrift nl tel. +32 499 16 70 10


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