[ffii] Tauss calls on German Gov't to oppose CEC/BSA and EPO (fwd)

[PILCH Hartmut <phm@a2e.de>]

---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Fri, 15 Mar 2002 19:06:26 +0100
From: PILCH Hartmut <phm@a2e.de>
To: news@ffii.org
Cc: patents@ffii.org
Subject: [ffii] Tauss calls on German Gov't to oppose CEC/BSA and EPO

Jörg Tauss, president of the New Media Commission of the German
Federal Parliament and in charge of Media and Education in the Social
Democratic Party (SPD)'s Parliamentary Fraction, has written a letter
to his party colleague and minister of justice Prof. Herta
Däubler-Gmelin.  Tauss asks Ms Däubler-Gmelin to opppose this proposal
as resolutely as she opposed the planned modification of Art 52 EPC in
november 2000.  This proposal, Tauss says, merely enshrines a highly
questionable practise of the European Patent Office (EPO).  There is
indeed a need for legislating at the EU level on the limits of
patentability, Tauss says, but the EPO practise is the problem, not
the solution.  Software patents seem harmful for innovation,
incompatible with Europe's strategic interests, dangerous for open
source software, less than helpful for proprietary software companies
including such bing players as SAP, serving mainly monopoly interests
of a few american monopolists behind BSA.  The minister should not be
fooled by false assertions about the TRIPS treaty.  The TRIPS treaty
is a reason to embrace the strict definition of %(e:technical
invention) (teaching about physical causalities), according to which
software does %(e:not) constitute or belong to a %(q:field of
technology).  Tauss founds his explanations on an expert hearing which
he together with colleagues from all parties in the parliament
conducted in June 2001.  It seems that he represents a consensus
position shared at least by most of the members of the parliamentary
subcommission on the New Media.  This is confirmed by all publicly
known statements given by other MPs so far.  The German Government
should take a position similar to that of France and of the German
Ministry of Economics (BMWi), Tauss says.  The latter has not been
published yet, but it is known that there is widespread skepticism
about software patents in the BMWi.

See the letter, available in a quick (not quite finished) english
translation, at

    http://swpat.ffii.org/papri/eubsa-swpat0202/tauss020312/

-- 
Hartmut Pilch, FFII & Eurolinux Alliance              tel. +49-89-12789608
Protecting Innovation against Patent Inflation       http://swpat.ffii.org/
100,000 signatures against software patents      http://www.noepatents.org/
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