[Patents] Pugatch paper on swpat directive struggles /dok:mpugatch060127

[PILCH Hartmut <phm@a2e.de>]

----- Forwarded message from PILCH Hartmut <phm@a2e.de> -----

Date: Wed, 16 Jul 2008 11:31:39 +0200 (CEST)
From: PILCH Hartmut <phm@a2e.de>
To: eupat@ffii.org
Subject: Pugatch paper on swpat directive struggles /dok:mpugatch060127

Here's the source text of what I wrote about it at

       http://eupat.ffii.org/08/07

[% WRAPPER BlogRek tit='Pugatch paper on lessons from software patent 
directive battle' dat='2008-07-16' anchor='pugatch16' -%]

I just stumbled over a {ah
url="http://www.copyright.bbk.ac.uk/contents/workshops/mpugatch.pdf";
dokref=mpugatch060127:paper from 2006-01-27 by Dr. Meir Perez Pugatch
of University of Haifa} which tries to draw lessons from the struggle
over the failure of the patent movement to get its rules codified by
the legislator in 1997-2005 through the {ah
url="/papers/europarl0309":EU software patent directive}.

The remarks are rather cursory and Mr. Pugatch does not seem to know
very much about the content of the various proposals and the related
struggles.  His paper is about the "political economy" of struggles
related to "IP policy" in general, and there again he may, like many
other commentators, be engaging in over-generalisations, based on
assumptions about the economics of "IPR" which are not grounded in the
grammar of the legal provisions under discussion.  The paper tries to
take an equidistant approach between the "pro-IP and anti-IP lobbies"
and comments the results of the failure of the directive in July 2005,
which both presented as their successes:

#Quote <<_EOT_
A pareto optimum economic result? Hardly! More like a Machiavellian sense of 
humour of how to do nothing and still reap all the praises and greetings from 
one's "subjects".
_EOT_

Here the author is perhaps making the "observation from a realistic
(and slightly cynical) perspective" which he announces in the title of
his paper.  But how can one claim that the two "lobbies" did
"nothing"?  Both fought to the brink of exhaustion, and at the end
felt that the result was probably the best that they could get in the
given situation, with a volatile and half-knowledgable parliamentary
majority of about 55% willing to seriously limit patentability, in
stand-off against a Council of ministerial patent officials, who, in
spite of some superficial signs of defection at the political level,
continued to be monolithically united in their unwillingness to even
discuss any question of substance whatsoever.  This was a typical
situation of stalemate where continuation of the struggle entailed
more risks than hopes for both sides.


Could it be that, in his determination to be cynical, the author is losing 
the feeling for political realities?
[% END %]

--
 Hartmut Pilch                                    http://a2e.de/i2p
 Patentability and Patent Governance in Europe    http://eupat.ffii.org

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----- End forwarded message -----

-- 
Hartmut Pilch                           http://a2e.de/phm