Re: [Patents] Will JURI vote on CULT and ITRE amendments ?

[James Heald <j.heald@ucl.ac.uk>]

Hartmut Pilch wrote:
> 
> > One other question about their procedures:
> >
> > Am I right in thinking that the amendments suggested in the CULT and
> > ITRE opinions are automatically  included to be voted on by JURI ?  Or
> > does JURI only vote on amendments put down by its own members ?
> >
> > Also, does anyone know whether any of the votes have yet happened ?  Or
> > has the 'consideration of amendments' so far just been general
> > discussion ?
> 
> The documents are all published and can be found via
> 
>         http://swpat.ffii.org/news/index.en.html
> 
> There is a set of amendments about which JURI will vote, and McCarthy has
> chosen to completely ignore JURI and ITRE, giving no reasons or only
> cryptic ones, see our criticism.  However, MEPs Echerer, McCormick,
> Gebhardt, Berenguer and Ilka Schroeder have submitted amendments in the
> spirit of CULT/ITRE and of our counter-proposal.  McCarthy and leading
> MEPs in JURI will try to vote those down without discussion but may also
> propose "compromise amendments".  I'd expect these to be mainly
> sugar-coatings in the spirit of the "industry joint statement".
> 


I've done some more digging and I think that the JURI tabled amendments
are definitely *not* the whole story

According to the EU Parliament's Rules of Procedure website
http://www2.europarl.eu.int/omk/sipade2?PUBREF=-//EP//TEXT+RULES-EP+20030201+RULE-162+DOC+XML+V0//EN&HNAV=Y

Rule 162
Opinions of committees

1.   Should the committee to which a question was first referred wish to
hear the views of another committee, or should another committee wish to
make known its views on the report of the committee to which a question
was first referred, such committees may ask the President that, in
accordance with Rule 154(3), one committee be named as the committee
responsible and the other as the committee asked for an opinion.

2.   In the case of documents of a legislative nature within the meaning
of Rule 60(1), the opinion shall consist of draft amendments to the text
referred to the committee accompanied, if appropriate, by short
justifications. Such justifications shall be the responsibility of the
draftsman and shall not be put to the vote. If necessary the committee
may submit a short written justification for the opinion taken as a
whole.

In the case of non-legislative texts, the opinion shall consist of
suggestions for parts of the motion for a resolution submitted by the
committee responsible.

The committee responsible shall put these draft amendments or
suggestions to the vote.

[snip]


Also, if we look at some old minutes eg:

http://www.europarl.eu.int/meetdocs/committees/juri/20010827/444968en.pdf

under items 11 and 13, we can see records of votes being taken on
amendments that came in from other committees.


This is somewhat important for the lobbying strategy, because if the way
the ITRE committee went is an indication, some of the amendments by
Echerer, McCormack et al may be too strong to get passed (ie
patentability only for control of forces of nature). But the weaker ITRE
position (control of forces of nature - OK; data processing - not OK;
everything else - let's see where the caselaw goes) may be able to
secure a majority.


Now, does anybody know anything about how the discussions have been
going ?