Patents

[xdrudis at tinet.org]

> Hello,
> 
> What is the state of the current draft for software patents. You 
> see I'm 
> not a law. but am in a flux to make changes to the current draft. 
> They 
> need to be in Dutch and I will hand them over to Kathleen Van 
> Brempt 
> sp.a EU parl. She will give in any proposal I make.
> For that to do I need to know how bad the current draft is with all 
> the 
> changes. (Saying simple NO to software patents won't do)
> 
> Thanxs
> Onno Timmerman
> sp.a
> 
No time for a good answer now, but fortunately it's already written
(not in Dutch, sorry):

Problems with the  Juri committee rapporteur draft
http://swpat.ffii.org/papers/eubsa-swpat0202/amccarthy0302/index.en.html

Counter proposal (how would good amendments look like)
http://swpat.ffii.org/papers/eubsa-swpat0202/prop/index.en.html

Basically ITRE and CULT committees have done well, but still left one
hole each that allowed for swpats (closed many others, though). The
Economic and Social Committee of the EU also voted a very good report, 
but the 3 docs are only opinions and don't seem to have been followed 
much so far. 

There is a meeting today of the JURI comittee in the Europarl where they
may discuss the swpat directive.