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EU Software Patent Directive plans shelved amid massive demonstrations Brussels 2003/09/01 For Immediate Release On Aug 28th, the European Parliament postponed its vote on the proposed EU Software Patent Directive. The day before, approximately 500 persons had gathered for a rally beside the Parliament in Brussels, accompanied by an online demonstration involving more than 2000 websites. The events in and near the Parliament were extensively in many news channels, including tv and radio, across Europe and the world. Within a few days, the petition calling the European Parliament to reject software patentability accumulated 50,000 new signatures. Details Last Wednesday, August 27th, several organisations called for a demonstration in Brussels and for an on-line demonstration against the proposed EU "software patent directive" COM(2002)92, euphemistically titled "on the patentability of computer-implemented inventions". Citizens demonstrated in front of the European Parliament, wearing black t-shirts and launching black balloons "to symbolise their sorrow for the innovation that the EU would lose if it approved a monopoly regime on computer based solutions as the Commission and the JURI report propose", as one of the organisers explained. Surrounded by banners and patent tombstones, several speeches were held and a pantomime play was performed which showed the EU bureaucracy helping wealthy corporations to strangle small innovative software enterprises. In spite of the short notice (it was only announced one week in advance), the online demonstration, calling to substitute homepages by a protest page for all of Wednesday, was followed by over 2800 websites. Among those were important websites such as those of the biggest Spanish labour union Comisiones Obreras, the Andalusian CGT union, the French SPECIS; large associations of computer professionals such as ATI.es, AI2 and Prosa.dk; user associations like SSLUG, Hispalinux, Asociaci�n de Internautas, AFUL and GUUG; software projects like Apache (developers of the most used web server in the world, with over 25 million installations), PHP (a very popular programing language), the two main free desktop projects (KDE and GNOME); operating system distributions LinEx, Slackware, Debian, Knoppix and Mandrake; civil rights associations, distributed development platform Savannah (hosting over 1500 projects), companies, weblogs, personal websites... The strike coincided with initiatives by new players, including national associations of SMEs, national labor unions, the internet sections of the French Parti Socialiste and German Social Democratic Party, and a [16]group of economists, all of whom sent letters to members of the European Parliament, warning them of faulty reasoning in the JURI report and catastrophic consequences for the European economy. The Parliament was already [17]divided in June, when it [18]postponed the decision to September. The massive protest among computer professionals, software companies and computer users, and its echo in the press on the Internet, radio and television, appear to have further eroded the directive's support in the European Parliament and encouraged various party groups to come out with new amendment proposals. The presidents of the transnational groups decided in a meeting on thursday afternoon to postpone the debate again from the planned European Parliament plenary session of Monday September 1st. The debate and vote may now take place in the next session (September 22-25) or at a later date, subject to decision next week. The directive has been controversial since its publication on 2002-02-20, and decisions have been delayed already seven times from the initially scheduled vote of 2002-12-16. During a conference in the European Parliament on Wednesday 14.00-16.00, Reinier Bakels, a dutch law scholar who had written a study on the directive at the order of the European Parliament, criticised: This directive proposal brings no clarity and no harmonisation. It is unclear and contradictory both on its aims and on the means of achieving these aims. The European Parliament can not be expected to repair such a fundamentally broken directive proposal. The best thing the Parliament can do is to send this proposal back to the Commission and demand that an interdisciplinary group of experts should work out a new proposal. Hartmut Pilch, president of FFII and speaker of the Eurolinux Alliance, agreed to this, but added: We hope that MEPs can, during the coming 3 weeks, understand that almost every single article and every single recital of this directive needs major amendments, if a clear limitation of patentability is to be achieved. We have proposed a set of amendments[26] which could do the job and has received backing by a large part ot the interested communities[27]. Many of these amendments have already been or are being tabled by MEPs from various political groups. By voting for these amendments, MEPs can prompt the Commission and the Council to come up with a new proposal, this time based on a serious assessment of the interests of all parties and a verifiable solution to the problems, without any more doublespeak or ambiguous terminology. Annotated Links -> [19]Draft Press Release 200000 Report about the successes of the Demo in BXL, focussing on the rise in number of petition signatures. -> [20]CORDIS 2003-08-28: Draft legislation on patenting computerised inventions will stifle innovation, claim protestors An official EU news agency reports about the demo, with an interview of Peter Gerwinski from FFII see also [21]CORDIS: MEPs vote to tighten up rules on patentability of computerised inventions Media Contacts mail: media at ffii org phone: Hartmut Pilch +49-89-18979927 More Contacts to be supplied upon request About the Eurolinux Alliance -- www.eurolinux.org The EuroLinux Alliance for a Free Information Infrastructure is an open coalition of commercial companies and non-profit associations united to promote and protect a vigourous European Software Culture based on copyright, open standards, open competition and open source software such as Linux. Corporate members or sponsors of EuroLinux develop or sell software under free, semi-free and non-free licenses for operating systems such as GNU/Linux, MacOS or MS Windows. About the FFII -- www.ffii.org The Foundation for a Free Information Infrastructure (FFII) is a non-profit association registered in Munich, which is dedicated to the spread of data processing literacy. FFII supports the development of public information goods based on copyright, free competition, open standards. More than 250 members, 300 companies and 15,000 supporters have entrusted the FFII to act as their voice in public policy questions in the area of exclusivity rights (intellectual property) in the field of software. Permanent URL of this Press Release http://swpat.ffii.org/news/03/demo0827/index.en.html Annotated Links -> [22]2003/08/25-9 BXL: Software Patent Directive Amendments Members of the European Parliament are coming back to work on monday August 25th. It is the last week before the vote on the Software Patent Directive Proposal. We are organising a conference and street rally wednesday the 27th. Some of our friends will moreover be staying in the parliament for several days. Time to work decide on submission of amendments to the software patent directive proposal is running out. FFII has proposed one set of amendments that stick as closely as possible to the original proposal while debugging and somewhat simplifying it. An alternative small set of amendments would "cut the crap" and rewrite the directive from scratch. We present and explain the possible approaches. -> [23]Online Demonstration Against Software Patents We can show our concern by physical presence as well as by more or less gently blocking access to webpages in a concerted manner at certain times. -> [24]Vote in 8 days: 2000 IT bosses urge European Parliament to say NO to software patents A "Petition for a Free Europe without Software Patents" has gained more than 150000 signatures. Among the supporters are more than 2000 company owners and chief executives and 25000 developpers and engineers from all sectors of the European information and telecommunication industries, as well as more than 2000 scientists and 180 lawyers. Companies like Siemens, IBM, Alcatel and Nokia lead the list of those whose researchers and developpers want to protect programming freedom and copyright property against what they see as a "patent landgrab". Currently the patent policy of many of these companies is still dominated by their patent departments. These have intensively lobbied the European Parliament to support a proposal to allow patentability of "computer-implemented inventions" (recent patent newspeak term which usually refers to software in the context of patent claims, i.e. algorithms and business methods framed in terms of generic computing equipment), which the rapporteur, UK Labour MEP Arlene McCarthy, backed by "patent experts" from the socialist and conservative blocks, is trying to rush through the European Parliament on June 30, just 13 days after she had won the vote in the Legal Affairs Committe (JURI). -> [25]FFII: Software Patents in Europe For the last few years the European Patent Office (EPO) has, contrary to the letter and spirit of the existing law, granted more than 30000 patents on computer-implemented rules of organisation and calculation (programs for computers). Now Europe's patent movement is pressing to consolidate this practise by writing a new law. Europe's programmers and citizens are facing considerable risks. Here you find the basic documentation, starting from a short overview and the latest news. References 16. http://swpat.ffii.org/news/03/ekon0820/index.en.html 17. http://swpat.ffii.org/news/03/plen0620/index.en.html 18. http://swpat.ffii.org/news/03/plen0626/index.en.html 19. http://wiki.ael.be/index.php/PressRelease200000 20. http://dbs.cordis.lu/cgi-bin/srchidadb?CALLER=NHP_EN_NEWS&ACTION=D&SESSION=&RCN=EN_RCN_ID:20801&TBL=EN_NEWS 21. http://dbs.cordis.lu/cgi-bin/srchidadb?CALLER=NHP_EN_NEWS&ACTION=D&SESSION=&RCN=EN_RCN_ID:20436 22. http://swpat.ffii.org/events/2003/europarl/08/index.en.html 23. http://swpat.ffii.org/group/demo/index.en.html 24. http://swpat.ffii.org/news/03/epet0622/index.en.html 25. http://swpat.ffii.org/index.en.html 26. http://swpat.ffii.org/papers/eubsa-swpat0202/prop/index.en.html 27. http://swpat.ffii.org/papers/eubsa-swpat0202/demands/index.en.html
