RE: [ffii] EuroParl Swpat Hearing Review

[Philippe.Aigrain@cec.eu.int]

The account is good. In particular the part on glimpse of the EU lobbying is
striking. But one consequence is that an enormous pedagogical effort is
necessary to calmly explain the issues to all who are ready to listen.

Take example of the tobacco advertising ban directive. The Legal Affairs and
Internal Committee, lobbied to the bone, voted an incredible list of
amendments in favour of the tobacco industry. But the plenary rejected each
and every of those, because everybody who wants to see it knows that only
lobbying can explain these amendments, and knows that the public good lies
in the other direction.

Only when it can be made equally evident that patentability of information
entities and processing of information leads to a criminal appropriation of
the common good (as I do certainly believe) will it be possible (maybe) to
counter the lobbying you have described. This calls for firm but calm
argumentation and proof, even in the face of bad faith and
misrepresentation. I sometimes myself depart from this line because a
particular biased argument, dirty lobbying action, or failure to stand for
the public good infuriates me out of control. But one shouldn't not.

A key to convincing is also to make arguments a bit simpler: fight the fog
of the patent jargon, go back to facts. In particular, I find the idea
proposed (I believe by Mr. Rocard) of explicitely stating examples of things
one does not want to see patented quite productive: it puts people to the
stand of demonstrating whether or not this will be achieved by their
proposal legal text.

Finally on lobbying and related abuse, the facts can be simply exposed. All
facts. But being careful to avoid any vague or undocumented statement that
permit people to pose as victims of witch hunts.

Regards,

Philippe Aigrain


-----Original Message-----
From: PILCH Hartmut [mailto:phm@a2e.de]
Sent: mardi 12 novembre 2002 12:04
To: news@ffii.org
Cc: patents@aful.org; intprop-l@topica.com; epo@mlist.austria.eu.net
Subject: [ffii] EuroParl Swpat Hearing Review


See

        http://swpat.ffii.org/events/2002/europarl11/

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