[Patents] Blurring jurisdictions. The Hague Convention

[xdrudis@tinet.org (Xavi Drudis Ferran)]

I've been sent a new text on the Hague Convention, that could 
blur jurisdictions on software patents across 49 contries. 
Why do they always send them on my examinations months ?

Does anyone know how likely this is to be approved?. I don't 
know about law, but it all sounds like nonsense to me...
... so I fear it could be approved...


Full text:
http://www.cptech.org/ecom/jurisdiction/whatyoushouldknow.html

Excerpt:

----- Forwarded message from James Love <love@cptech.org> -----
[...]

I.  INTRODUCTION.

This note addresses concerns over the negotiations for a new
treaty that seeks to strengthen the global enforcement of
private judgments and injunctive relief in commercial
litigation.  While the convention would clearly have some
benefits, in terms of stricter enforcement of civil
judgments, it would also greatly undermine national
sovereignty and inflict far-reaching and profound harm on the
public in a wide range of issues.

The treaty is called the Hague Convention on Jurisdiction and
Foreign Judgments in Civil and Commercial Matters, and is
being negotiated under the little known Hague Conference on
Private International Law.  The treaty is complex and far
reaching, but is effectively unknown to the general public.

In this paper, I examine the following issues.

-   How does the Convention work?
-   What are the consequences of global enforcement of non-
harmonized laws?
-   What is the significance of the Article 4 choice of
forum clause in the Hague Convention?
-   What is the significance of mandatory enforcement of all
sui generis intellectual property laws on markets for data,
music, movies, pharmaceuticals and biotechnology?
-   Why does the Article 28f public policy exception fail to
protect the public, and how does the Convention undermine
common carrier protections for ISPs?
-   What can people do?

[...]

In the patent area, the Hague convention would force European
governments to begin enforcing judgments and injunctive
relief from US software and business methods patents, even
though software and business methods cannot be patented in
many European countries.  As the rest of the world is forced
to pay for US software and business methods patents, they
will enact their own anti-competitive and poorly managed
software and business method patent systems, and US citizens
will have to pay for those too.

[...]

The contracts can also shift jurisdiction on software to
countries that do not permit reverse engineering.  Web pages
that have terms of service agreements on such issues as
hypertext linking or use of company or brand names in meta-
tags, or that require prior approval for reviews of products,
or any number of other clauses, all of which exist today,
would be much stronger because companies could simply point
the choice of court to the jurisdiction most likely to
actually enforce these provisions.  The free software
movement would be particularly vulnerable to these
provisions, as well as the expanded reach of overly broad
national laws on software patents and trade secrets.

[...]

The CPT web page on the Convention is here:

    http://www.cptech/ecom/jurisdiction/hague.html

----- End forwarded message -----

-- 
Xavier Drudis Ferran
xdrudis@tinet.org