Re: [Patents] patents in europe...

[Hartmut Pilch <phm@a2e.de>]

> Well, basically because understanding the issues costs effort and time,
> and decision makers have lots of decisions to make, not only this one,
> so they can be expected tofollow the tide in most, except a few were
> they take more interest.

The tide being the usual authorities who have decided patent policy for
the last few decades, without ever feeling any pressure to care about
anybody else's opinion.  They are deeply convinced that this is their
domain and feel threatened if anybody questions their ownership of patent
policy.  Deviating from their opinion would not only mean that you have to
think yourself about a difficult subject.  It means also that you will
have the patent community as your ennemy the next time when you are
involved in patent policies.  And if that is about the community patent or
some other not software-related issue, no other fraction will be there to
come to your support.

One could have expected the power calculus to be different for people like
Liikanen, who in the future may be involved with IT people more often than
with patent lawyers.  But even here, Liikanen's partners for many projects
come from organisations such as EICTA, not to speak of Nokia's influence
in Finnland.

It is easier to agree to "opensource for public administrations", because
there you have only Microsoft and friends as a serious opponent, and no
ownership of policymaking by any entrenched group.