Re: [Patents] Your notes on directive COM(2002)92

[Hartmut Pilch <phm@a2e.de>]

> I read last month in the news that you wanted an open debate on the
> software patent directive, after having read a note from you that
> was distributed after the May 7th and 8th conference on software
> patents in the European Parliament, in mailing lists and the web,
> where people interested in the conference could see it.

...

> http://www.aful.org/wws/arc/patents

Indeed this has been a forum of open and fairly well-informed debate
during the last few years.

We and others have also been organising a multitude of conferences during
the last years.  Prof. Brian Kahin explicitely invited Ms McCarthy to the
IFRI conference in Paris, and similar attempts were made before the IVIR
conference in Amsterdam.  There may be another opportunity at OECD in
Paris this August.  So far we and our colleagues never received any reply
to the invitations from Ms McCarthy, nor on any other emails.

During all this time we wrote several papers in which we criticised
statements of Arlene McCarthy

        http://swpat.ffii.org/papers/eubsa-swpat0202/amccarthy0206/
        http://swpat.ffii.org/papers/eubsa-swpat0202/amccarthy0302/
        http://swpat.ffii.org/papers/eubsa-swpat0202/amccarthy0305/

which were widely cirtulated and known to many people in the EP.  Yet we
saw not a trace of any process of dialog and learning.  Each paper had to
start from the same starting point.  Each paper used the same arguments
which were evidently not optimised for an informed discussion but rather
for misleading novices and soothing MEP consciences.

We are ourselves organising conferences in the European Parliament.  One
is starting in a few minutes in room A8F 388:

        How to Patent Business Methods under the Proposed Directive
        http://swpat.ffii.org/events/2003/europarl/

More will follow during the coming weeks

        http://swpat.ffii.org/events/2003/europarl/

The discussion about this directive has already lasted more than 5 years,
and there hasn't been a lack of conferences and dialogues.  Probably few
political subjects have been scrutinised as carefully and objectively as
that of software patents.  Yet, during most of this time, those who
traditionally hold legislative power in the area of patents, i.e. the
patent arms of large companies, associations and governments and their
political relays largely stayed out of the discussion.

It is not too late to change this and to begin an open discussion, which
means to question the practise of all parties, including the European
Patent Office, and to ask seriously what kind of property rules we want if
Europe is to become the most competitive information economy (rather than
the most competitive litigation economy) by 2010.

-- 
Hartmut Pilch, FFII & Eurolinux Alliance              tel. +49-89-18979927
Protecting Innovation against Patent Inflation       http://swpat.ffii.org/
145,000 votes 400 firms against software patents     http://noepatents.org/