SoftwarePatents

EU Software Patentability Directive

The main IFSO site has a [WWW] brief summary of the issues and a list of EuropeanCompaniesAgainstSoftwarePatents.

  1. EU Software Patentability Directive
    1. Current status
    2. Action
    3. Parties
    4. Irish MEP's and politicians
    5. Other links and information

Current status

Current status 2005 07 06: The directive has been rejected by the parliament. This would appear to be the end of this directive, judging by Commissioner McCreevy's previous statement that "... if the parliament was to reject the directive then I would not be putting another proposal on the table."

Current status 2005 06 01: The directive was passed by the Council. Next it will be considered by the European parliament on July 6th 2005. We hope that at the very least the amendments of Michel Rocard (who is the Rapporteur for this Directive) will be accepted.

Charlie McCreevy took up the post of Commissioner for the Internal Market and Services on November 1 2004. McCreevy's predecessor in the post (Bolkenstein) was very pro swpats, so this change may be good.

On December 20 2004 the directive was to be approved as an A list ("uncontroversial") item by the Environment committee(!) ([WWW] FFII link). On the 20th Wlodzimierz Marcinski (Poland's Minister of Science and Computerisation) appeared in person at the committee to remove the item from the agends ([WWW] FFII link, [WWW] Enquirer link [WWW] reg. link [WWW] news.com link). It is not exactly clear what action will be taken next but it is notable that this is the second time Poland has acted to ensure the democratic process is followed on this matter.

Action

Parties

(comments on the party positions are very approximate, but indicate trends; these groups do no necessarily vote uniformly).

(there are also 29 seats unaccounted for above, who are not aligned with any party)

Irish MEP's and politicians

Justin Mason cross referenced the [WWW] election results with the [WWW] FFII index (high numbers are good). To summarise his summary:

There are quite a few MEP's with no established voting record

Other links and information

The single most useful site is the [WWW] FFII site on software patents. They also have a [WWW] wiki (which contains some different information, so you have to look at both); the main FFII site is sometimes difficult to navigate, but the information there is veyr good.

Another site that looks like it contains useful information is [WWW] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_patent

FFII has a very good short introduction page to point people to: [WWW] http://kwiki.ffii.org/ShortIntroEn

The following letter has been sent to the Committee of National Parliaments: [WWW] http://kwiki.ffii.org/LtrCosac040905En

Here is an [WWW] article from the July 7 2004 IHT. It is mostly concerned with change to the Dutch vote.

List of [WWW] Nominee Comissioners

[WWW] http://europa.eu.int/comm/commissioners/newcomm_en.htm

[WWW] Piece about the Munich linux migration which was almost derailed by patent worries (and still might be).

FFII letter on the council text at [WWW] their wiki

FFII also have information on voting trends in the parties: [WWW] http://kwiki.ffii.org/index.cgi?SwpateuroparlEn

Text of several letters sent by list members (from the fsfe-ie list archives). Good points in these:

Malcolm's argument used in a debate on software patents in DCU:

ZDNet article exposing serious flaws in a BSA study on software patents and SMEs:

Ifso in the press

More helpful articles and press releases

last edited 2006-03-23 09:45:12 by MalcolmTyrrell