[Fsfe-ie] Groklaw on Round 2...

[adam beecher]

Round 2 in the EU Patent Fight, a Pure Software Act Proposal, and CoLinux
Saturday, April 10 2004 @ 06:12 PM EDT

http://beecher.info/pheed/?yhfsls

Did you imagine that the fight over patents in Europe had been settled when
Parliament voted those amendments?

I have just heard from James Heald, of FFII the Foundation for a Free
Information Infrastructure, who tells me it's back to square one. FFII is a
non-profit association "dedicated to the spread of data processing literacy"
and which "supports the development of public information goods based on
copyright, free competition, and open standards".

Nokia in particular didn't like the amendments and neither did the Irish
Presidency of the European Union, it seems, because its draft text now
completely ignores all the amendments:

"After months of closed back room discussions, the Irish Presidency of the
European Union has referred the proposed EU Directive on software patents
back up to 'political' level. The Irish want members of the Council of
Ministers of the member states to agree to drop all objections by May. The
Presidency proposed draft text rejects all clarifying amendments made by the
European Parliament in September 2003 and instead pushes for direct
patentability of computer programs, data structures and process
descriptions.
"A last ditch attempt by the Luxembourg delegation to ensure
interoperability with patented standards was rejected. The Patent Department
at Nokia is collecting signatures from top company executives for a 'Call
for Action' in favour of the Presidency text. In the other corner,
supporters of the European Parliament's position have arranged conferences
to explain the dangers of software patents, and are mobilising for a 'net
strike' and a rally in Brussels on April 14th under the slogan 'No Software
Patents -- Power to the Parliament. They are hoping for a repeat of the
impact of similar actions in the run-up to September 2003, which helped
convince the European Parliament to vote clearly against software patents."

So round two begins.

[...]

http://beecher.info/pheed/?yhfsls