Update of Software Patents Agenda

[karin kosina]

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On Fri, 18 May 2001 loic at gnu.org wrote:

> Francois PELLEGRINI writes:
>  > So they preferred to push forward the patenting of software in the
>  > European patent directive, to which european nations will have to
>  > comply and thus change their national laws to admit the patenting
>  > of software.
>
> 	I realize when reading this that I completly missed an
> important point. European diretive are binding for members of European
> Union countries -> countries of the European Union represent the majority
> of countries signing the EPC -> European Commission can decide if
> the exception can be removed from EPC.

So, to state it in a few plain words: it is actually the European
Commission who decides (through their directive, thus indirectly
influencing the European Patent Convention). EU member states have to
ratify EU directives, so they will have to remove the exception of
software from being patentable from the EPC. Since most European
countries are EU members, the majority will be in favor of such a change
to the EPC.

Is that correct so far or do I misunderstand anything?

I just want to make sure that we get the facts straight. This whole
issue is confusing and (probably deliberately?) obfuscated, and somebody
(== us ;-)) ought to find out what's really going on.

Regards,                                     gpg - public key 0x1FE281EB
    Karin "kyrah" Kosina                                http://kyrah.net
                                                    http://the.system.at
+-----------------------------------><---------------------------------+
[ please sign the petition against software patents at ]
[ http://petition.eurolinux.org  ]



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