[Openstandaarden] Duiding rond stemming patenten...

[Herman Bruyninckx]

Hier is de tekst die voormalig EU officer Philippe Aigrain heeft
rondgestuurd. Hij lijkt de stemming een redelijk goed succes te vinden
:-)
(PS Aigrain was tot voor enkele maanden de EU verantwoordelijke voor
vrije software projecten.)

Herman
================
Subject: [Freesw] Vote in Parliament on software patentability

The detailed votes (with nominal votes) are - in MSWord format ... - at:
<http://www.europarl.eu.int/direct/documents/fr/vote/Resultats/Mercredi/Appelsnominaux 2003-09-24.doc>

Contrarily to what you may hear or read from Reuters, this is truly a 
victory against extension of patentability. Amendements have been voted 
that completely overturn the original meaning of the directive to make 
it a text that excludes from patentability any thing beyond the use fo 
forces of nature to control physical effects and exclude explicitly any 
form of information processing. In addition an amendment explicitly 
stating than software claims can not be accepted has been voted.For 
specialists 69-70-71-72 and first part of 55 + interoperability 
exception have gone through.

I guess that the Green and GUE have voted against the global report 
because they are afraid that this might be manipulated in the further 
political and implementation proces (in particular they wanted another 
version of the definition of technical - amendment 55 second half 
instead of 6 to go through, but it was not even submitted to vote, based 
on erroneous statement that 69 would be equivalent). I do not know teh 
outcome on one important amendment (57).

This is nonetheless a historical turning point: for the first time, a 
cross-party coalition has said no to the permanent extension of patents 
and other forms of restrictions to free and open knowledge. Already in 
1995 the Parliament rejected a first version of the biotech patents 
directive, but this was a different coalition, much less clear, and 
shortlived. TO measure the importance, see the detailed vote on 
amendment 55 first half voted 300 to 223 with the PSE divided 2/3-1/3 
and the PPE divided 1/3-2/3

The news releases announce the vote as a victory for patentability (see 
Reuters). Let's hope that the truth will reach even the news.

Now let's get ready for the fights in Council. The voted amendments are 
clearly unacceptable for those countries where the patent lobbies have 
key influence, as well as for the Commission, so they will do anything 
to get rid of them.

Philippe Aigrain
www.sopinspace.com/~aigrain/en/

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