Re: [Patents] JURI amendments for 22/4 now up (in Italian)

[Hartmut Pilch <phm@a2e.de>]

> Article 5 is the most addressed, here there are clear positions of
> people against patetnatbility of programs per se and people in favour.
> While people countrary gives interesting and sane explanations, the
> others (in favour of swpat) simply give as excuse that UBE already have

UBE (Ufficio di Brevetti Europeo) = EPO

> a practice and we should follow it blindly.

The list of MEPs who advocate this blind following of the EPO is quite
disturbing.  It includes

        Willy De Clercq (BE, ELDR)
        Ward Beysen (BE, ELDR)
        Malcolm Harbour (UK, EUPP)
        Werner Langen (DE, EUPP)
        Fourtou & Schaffner (FR, EUPP)
        Maria Berger (AT, PSE)

T. Manders is against the directive on formalistic grounds and would
prefer to have a regulation, which doesn't require parliament approval,
instead.  He also asks for insertion of "computer-implemented inventions"
into Art 52 EPC.

Kauppi (FI, EUPP), who has expressed herself anti-swpat many times, has
submitted only 2 amendments, which I find difficult to understand (making
things even more complicated) and useless, as they play the lawyers' game
of giving patents precedence over interoperability by opaque formulas.
It seems that within EUPP there is strong pressure to obey the EPO.

-- 
Hartmut Pilch, FFII & Eurolinux Alliance              tel. +49-89-12789608
Protecting Innovation against Patent Inflation       http://swpat.ffii.org/
140,000 signatures against software patents      http://www.noepatents.org/