Am Dienstag, den 21.12.2004, 20:15 +0000 schrieb robert burrell donkin:
> in europe at least, it's very likely that this won't really matter.
>
> by this time next year, software patent violations are most likely to
> be enforceable by criminal sanction. ...
I don't think so. The winds are changing and blowing into the faces of
those who are in favour of software patents. Unfortunately the European
Council is still amongs those - in contrary to most European
parliaments. I do hope that the council will be unable to enforce its
directive on software patents: As of today they suffered a heavy defeat
when they wanted to silently pass the directive without discussion in the
Agriculture and Fisheries (!) configuration: Poland's representative
refused to wave through the council's directive without discussion.
This caused the case to be taken off from the agenda. However, other
ministers in the council did not have that courage and would have
passed the guideline because they simply did not want to blame the
Netherlands which have the council's presidentship at present.
Now the blame is on themselves.
Everything is open again: Next year Luxembourg will have the
presidentship, and one might wonder whether they want to carry on with
this stuff. The change in presidentship might offer a change for the
European goverments to start listening to their parliaments and abandon
any further tries to enforce software patents.
Even if the European Council manages to pass the directive there is
still the European Parliament which has already proven to be against
software patents and could cancel the directive.
All in all, I am quite optimistic for 2005.
Best regards
Rainer Klute
Rainer Klute IT-Consulting GmbH
Dipl.-Inform.
Rainer Klute E-Mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Körner Grund 24 Telefon: +49 172 2324824
D-44143 Dortmund Telefax: +49 231 5349423
Softwarepatente verhindern: http://www.nosoftwarepatents.com/
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