Fwd:Latest news on European Softwarepatents - Fsf-friends

9 Jun 2004

      FYI 
--arky
--- contributors-request@osnews.com wrote:
...
Date: Tue, 08 Jun 2004 12:00:00 +0000
From: contributors-request@osnews.com
Subject: Contributors digest, Vol 1 #62 - 1 msg
To: contributors@osnews.com
Today's Topics:

Latest news on European Softwarepatents (Arend

Lammertink)
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Message: 1
Date: Tue, 08 Jun 2004 13:27:13 +0200
From: Arend Lammertink alam@home.nl
To: contributors@osnews.com
Subject: [OSNews Contrib] Latest news on European
Softwarepatents
This is a multi-part message in MIME format.
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Hi there,
I was part of a delegation that handed over a
petition to the Dutch 
government on behalf of the FFII, against
softwarepatents.
As a result of this, the decision taken by the
Counsil of Ministers is 
once again under discussion and might even be
overturned!
I have typed about half the story and would like to
know if this would 
have any chance of being published.
Of course, I'm open to any suggestions and
improvements (English is not 
my native language) and I still need to write the
other half, which I 
think is quite interesting.
For example, the only company that was present at
the emergency debate 
were our friends from Redmond. Since they also
sponsor the Irish 
presidency, it is obvious they had something to gain
here.
What do you think?
Should I write the other half?
Kindest regards,
Arend Lammertink.
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The latest news on European Software Patents.
The battle about Software Patents in Europe seemed
all but lost. The council of ministers voted for a
directive that basically slapped the European
Parliament in the face because they shamelessly put
aside a democratic decision taken by said
Parliament. And even though the Parliament still has
a second reading where it has to go to a lot of
trouble to repair the damage done by the Council, it
is a serious matter that the Council of Ministers
have shown they have no idea of the devastating
consequences of their directive for the European
SME's. What's more, they have shown twice in one
week that they have no respect for the democratic
opinion of the European Parliament, which in itself
is absolutely unacceptable.
It turned out that the Dutch Eurocommisionar had
played a big role in convincing our German
neighbours to vote in favor of a "compromise" that
basically puts the European Software industry on
sell-off, since of 30.000 softwarepatents the EPO
already gave out against the letter and spirit of
the existing law, 75% belong to non-European
multinationals and it is unclear what happens to the
legal status of these patents.
If he reads this, I want him to know that I am going
to vote for the Parliament coming Thursday as I did
last time and I, as a European citizen, want my vote
to be respected.
_Seemed_ all but lost. But it ain't over yet. We've
played our cards (and luck!) quite nicely here in
The Netherlands (if I may say so myself) and at this
moment the Dutch Parliament is seriously considering
to revoke the vote Minister Brinkhorst gave at the
Council. This has never happened before in the
history of the European Union!
So, what's going on out there? Did we miss
something?
Well, the ball started rolling because I knew a
member of the Dutch Parliament, Annie Schrijer (
http://www.tweede-kamer.nl/leden_commissies_fracties/griffie_lfc/kamerdet636...
...
), who turned out to be vice-chairman of the
Committee for Economic affairs in the Dutch
Parliament.
After the demonstration on friday the 14th of May at
the Dutch ministry of Economic Affairs, I talked to
some of the representatives of the FFII and
vrijschrift.org and I told them I knew Mrs. Schrijer
and could be able to contact her. Since we thought
it might help, I decided to call her.
Since she lives just a few kilometers from where I
live, it could happen that I went over to her place
the next saturday and was able to tell her the whole
story. Fortunately she had had patent issues in her
dossier before, so it didn't took long for her to
understand exactly what was going on.
Even though she could not do much herself directly,
she could tell me how I could try to hand over an
urgent petition to the Dutch Parliament on tuesday
May 18th, the day the Ministers were to vote in the
Council. That always seems to "shake the bed" as she
put it.
Well, I could not have imagened how right she was.
First of all, we offered the petition to the right
persons this time. Previously, we had offered it to
the civil servants who wrote the letters on behalf
of the Minister that later turned out to contain
critical errors...
Of course, these guys were not very interested in
"shaking the bed". They were more interested in
getting this over as quickly and quietly as
possible.
But, there we were.
Tuesday, the 18th of May.  Just 5 geeks disguised as
businessmen standing eye to eye with the Commision
for Economic Affairs of the Dutch Parliament :
http://www.harmwal.nl/img/20040518denhaagmaastricht/pict0007.jpg
...
What happens in such a case is that you are allowed
to say your thing for about 5 minutes. After that,
it's usually "thanks" and off you go.
This time, there was just a little tiny extra
detail. Apparantly Annie had done her homework and
she had noticed that there was an error in the
letter the Minister (or better: his civil servants)
had sent to the Parliament prior to the vote in the
Council, explaining that there was "agreement"
between the European Parliament and the Council,
which had been understood by the Dutch Parliament as
saying "dont't worry, everything is arranged and in
order". By that time, it was already clear that the
Dutch members of the European Parliament were not
exactly speaking about an "agreement". Oops.
So, we had our hands on a classical case of
"onjuiste informatie" ("incorrect information") to
the Parliament by a responsible politician, not
seldom resulting in the forced resignation of such a
politician.
Clearly this is something the opposition is always
interested in. In the Netherlands, they have an
important task in being the guarding dog of the
Parliament. It just had to be wakened....
So, Annie whispered something into their ears that I
was unable to hear. However, we would soon find out
the guarding dog had been wakened. What happened was
that a letter was sent to the Minister where he was
asked to explain the situation. Unfortunately, we
don't have a copy of this letter, but the answer of
the Minister is available on the official website of
the Dutch Ministry of Economic Affars (in Dutch):
http://www.ez.nl/upload/docs/Kamerbrieven/PDF-Documenten/4033973-vtk.pdf
...
(Exercise for the reader: Who actually wrote it?)
Of course, we had some remarks (in Dutch),
co-authored by mr.ir. R.B.Bakels [1]:
http://www.vrijschrift.nl/Members/arend/Brief_AO_EZ/becommentarieerde_brief_...
...
For those of you that don't understand Dutch, the
letter, prepared in the Minister's name by his civil
servants, contains just the standard arguments
copycatted from the European Commission, but no
answer to the question "was there or was there not
an agreement between the European Parliament and the
Council?".
What might be interesting at this point is to take a
look at the transcriptions of the debate at the
Council of Ministers:
http://wiki.ael.be/index.php/V002.ogg
http://wiki.ael.be/index.php/V003.ogg
Especially the last part of the second transcription
shows an interesting insight into democracy as
practiced by the Council of Ministers.
(Note: even though the extension suggests they're
ogg files, they're not. 
       They are transcriptions of ogg files and in
html format. The audio
       recordings are also available:
       http://wiki.ael.be/index.php/Transcription )
Anyway, the answer of the Minister was unsatisfying
and therefore the Dutch Commission for Economic
Affairs ordered a "spoed-debat" ("emergency debate")
on the matter. They wanted to know if an error was
made and also if they would be able to revoke the
vote of the Minister, should they want to.
:-:-:
Short answer for now:

Yes, there was an error
Yes, all European countries can revoke their vote

if they want to
The Dutch Parliament will debate on the subject
before the end of this month.
To be continued before publication ...
=======
[1] Mr.ir. R.B. Bakels.  Connected to the Centre for
Intellectual Propertyright of the University of
Utrecht. Author of the "JURI 107" report about
Softwarepatents for the European Parliament
(together with prof. Hugenholtz). He is considered
as one of the leading experts on the subject of
Softwarepatents.
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