Question: So, is software patentable or not...

[Bernhard Kaindl]

On Mon, 29 Sep 2003, João Miguel Neves wrote:
> >
> > Please note that there is no "final" wording of the "law" yet.
> > The vote in the European parliament was about a proposed directive.
> > That proposed directive is not active yet, so it still can be changed.
>
> It's a bit worst than that. This was the first reading. Before the
> second reading, the europarl must agree with the council of europe and
> the comission on the final result.

No, the europarl does not have to finally agree with the council and
there is no requirement ot have an agreement before the 2nd reading.

If the council and the europarl find no agreement, this directive is
rejected. It may mean that, like commissioner Bolkenstein warned the
democratic forum, the process may bedone without it's democratic
invervention if it does not want to take part in it.

But the europarl gave a strong signal that it wants to take part in
it - with it's final vote to adopt the text it amended. It needed to
do more fixes to the text than the commissioner expected but he
should be happy with the result and be thankful that the EP fixed
the text to actually do what the commissioner wanted.

>                                ... Unless we are extremely effective at
> the national level at this moment, all the victories we had until now
> can be undone.

Exactly, we have to inform the press about this good and strong
signal of the Europarl, describing that it really achives what
the commissioner said to want and that the council should not
destroy it.

I think it would be good to make a good proposal what the council
should fix and pass it to the national members of parliament, after
all they are the people which represent us(the constituents, which
are their highest priority) and only they can put pressure on the
goverment which can put pressure on the ministers in the council
ulitmatively.

Bernhard
PS: The press of course also plays a role with regard
to the members of the national parliaments, because something
which is not publically discussed is maybe not of much
interest to the members of parliaments so it might be
better to have some publicity behind the talks.