job outsourcing to india and

[PILCH Hartmut <phm@a2e.de>]

The JURI directive proposal contains a recital by McCarthy which we have
extensively criticised at

            
http://swpat.ffii.org/papers/eubsa-swpat0202/amccarthy0302/#outsorc
            http://swpat.ffii.org/papers/eubsa-swpat0202/amccarthy0305/#india

The following provision was, in spite of the evident silliness and the
extensive criticism, approved 20:9 by the conservative-socialist majority in
JURI:

> The competitive position of European industry in relation to its major
> trading partners will be improved if the current differences in the legal
> protection of computer-implemented inventions are eliminated and the legal
> situation is transparent. With the present trend for traditional 
> manufacturing
> industry to shift their operations to low-cost economies outside the 
> European
> Union, the importance of intellectual property protection and in particular
> patent protection is self-evident.

Below is a related rant from the latest GregNews which may be doing injustice
to two professors (we don't know because we don't have their full quotes in
context).  But the rant would be correct if the call to resign was directed
not to these two professors but to McCarthy and Wuermeling.

>     -  TWO ECONOMICS PROFESSORS CLUELESS ABOUT SMART NON-AMERICANS

> The 28 July 2003 edition of the New York Times has an article about the
> growing problem of US companies outsourcing more and more service-
> and skill-type jobs overseas (for example, IBM's recent comments that
> it will be shipping such jobs to India). It is a problem that politicians
> are avoiding because it is too complicated a socioeconomic problem to
> be solved with their usual knee jerk solutions.

> Two economics professors are quoted, Robert Feenstra at UCal Davis, and
> J. David Richardson at Syracuse.  Feenstra's solution is to improve the
> quality of the labor freed up as jobs move overseas - that way,
> Americans will be able to exploit their "competitive advantage" in
> producing high technology and high value goods and services.
> Richardson's solution is similar - to fill the jobs that will stay
> and proliferate in the United States, in fields like global coordination,
> sophisticated design, customization and consulting, the skill level of
> the labor force will have to deepen through new training.

> I suggest both professors take a one year sabbatical (ok, I think they
> should just resign), and spend the year examining the patent applications
> and journal articles coming from overseas.  Countries like India and
> China are turning out scientists, engineers and consultants as
> sophisticated as the Americans.  They will be reaching for the same high
> level rungs on the ladder of life that retrained and already trained
> Americans will be reaching for.  Just read the patents being filed from
> these countries.

> It is a shame that the Patent Office isn't part of the Commerce Department
> to help the Commerce Department and economists get a better feel for
> innovation in and out of the United States.

-- 
Hartmut Pilch, FFII & Eurolinux Alliance              tel. +49-89-18979927
Protecting Innovation against Patent Inflation       http://swpat.ffii.org/
160,000 votes 2000 firms against software patents    http://noepatents.org/