BIG SURPRISE IN BRUSSELS: PATENT DIRECTIVE OFF COUNCIL AGENDA

[Anne Østergaard <anne oestergaard nu>]

Thank you Poland!

http://www.nosoftwarepatents.com/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=254
 
 
BIG SURPRISE IN BRUSSELS: 
EU COUNCIL TAKES SOFTWARE PATENT DIRECTIVE OFF ITS AGENDA 
DURING TODAY'S MEETING, ACCOMODATING A REQUEST BY POLAND 

Undersecretary Wlodzimierz Marcinski asks for additional time to prepare
a "constructive declaration" -- Software patent debate is wide open --
Software patent critics: "The Polish government deserves greatest
admiration for its courage!" 

Brussels (21 December 2004). In a totally unexpected turn of events, the
EU Council took its proposal for a software patent directive off its
agenda during today's meeting. Actually the item had been slated for
debateless approval as a so-called "A" item. Polish undersecretary
Wlodzimierz Marcinski asked for additional time in order to be able to
write up a "constructive declaration". The meeting chairman accomodated
the request since no country raised objections. The EU Commission
expressed its regrets but also accepted this decision. 

After the political positions of several countries had changed, the
proposal had no more qualified majority, but the Council wanted to
decide on the basis of a majority that existed on May 18th. Florian
Mueller, campaign manager of NoSoftwarePatents.com, commented: "The
Polish government deserves greatest admiration for its courage! At times
it looked like the enemies of democracy would prevail in the EU Council
and force a decision that lacked a legitimate majority. Now Europe has
the opportunity to have a constructive debate on the severe shortcomings
of the current Council text, under the new Luxembourgish EU presidency
next year. Even at Christmas time, Europe has nothing to give away --
and particularly we can't give our domestic software markets away to a
few large U.S. corporations that prefer a litigious environment over a
competitive market!" 

Council Lost Qualified Majority, Wanted to Formalize Decision
Regardless 

On December 7th, Belgian minister of economic affairs Marc Verwilghen
had told the Belgian parliament that the "the qualified majority [for
software patents] no longer exists". The Dutch parliament had passed a
resolution on July 1st, asking its government to abstain, but the Dutch
government decided to ignore the will of its parliament. The Polish
government reiterated on November 16th that it "cannot support the
current proposal" but was pressured by the Dutch EU presidency and other
countries to support the decision. At times it looked like Poland would
give in to that pressure. 

Austrian conservative MEP Othmar Karas, vice president of the largest
group in the European Parliament (EPP-ED), had warned: "It would be
downright anti-democratic to adopt a proposal that has no more qualified
majority on the day of the official decision." 

Several countries, including France, Hungary, Poland, Latvia and the
Netherlands, wante to add statements to the Council's decision by which
they would distance themselves from the very position they voted for. 

In a previous statement on www.NoSoftwarePatents.com, Linus Torvalds and
other European software developers had already denounced the Council's
current proposal as "deceptive, dangerous, and democratically
illegitimate". 

Last-Minute Political and Diplomatic Activity 

In a flurry of last-minute activity, a small demonstration had taken
place outside of a German government building in Berlin. The mayor of
Munich yesterday contacted the German federal government and asked to
reopen the negotiations in the EU Council on the software patent
directive. The city of Munich had temporarily suspended its Linux
migration project in the summer over patent-related concerns. On
November 18th, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer had warned Asian governments
that they would face patent litigation if using the Linux operating
system instead of Microsoft's Windows product. 

About the NoSoftwarePatents.com Campaign 

The NoSoftwarePatents.com campaign was launched on October 20th in
initially 12 languages and is supported by three IT companies (1&1, Red
Hat, and MySQL AB). More information on the campaign is available on the
campaign Web site. 

Contact Information 

For further information concerning this announcement or the
NoSoftwarePatents.com campaign, please contact: 

Florian Mueller 
Campaign Manager, NoSoftwarePatents.com 
telephone +49 (8151) 651850 
press nosoftwarepatents com 


Best Christmas wishes

Anne
-- 
Anne Østergaard <anne oestergaard nu>