McCarthy wins in JURI

[Hartmut Pilch <phm@a2e.de>]

The JURI vote was delayed by 2 hours.  Our little conference was thereby
made impossible.  Around 13.00 the voting was pushed through in 20
minutes, and McCarthy won a majority on all points, which means

 - introduction of program claims
 - refusal of interoperability privilege (ITRE 15)
 - refusal of definition of "technical"
 - what is new needn't be technical and what is technical needn't be new
 - no need for a technical solution, only problem must be technical
 - additional rationales for patentability (e.g. need to make money
   from licensing in view of low-cost economies)

etc.

McCarthy was subsequently surrounded by congratulating journalists and
explained them that she only wanted to harmonise the status quo, wasn't
legalising software patents, was against US-style patenting of algorithms
and business methods, would not hurt opensource software etc.  Some of
these journalists also had a chance to meet Erik and Alex who watched the
session.

A collection of statements and documentation about the JURI vote is found
at

         http://swpat.ffii.org/news/03/juri0617/

-- 
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/