> Linux Reviews > News and headlines > 2005 News archive > January >

FFII (re)Starts advertisement complain against Patents

LinuxReviews.org

The long-lasting battle of Freedom versus Copyright is on the brink of a new important battle, this time in the form of EU software patents. Poland and Netherlands are heroes, your support is also needed.

  The adoption of EU Council's "common position" on a software patent
  directive has been delayed once again. This opens another window of
  opportunity for the European Parliament to restart the entire process, 
  cancelling the dreadful Council text of 18 May 2004.
  
  Since the political situation in Europe has changed (for example, due 
  to the positions of Poland and Netherlands) future negotiations in the 
  EU Council would almost certainly lead to a more acceptable result.
  
  Also, if the directive is not referred to the Parliament again
  but continued in 2nd reading, the European Parliament would to have 
  fix it under extremely difficult conditions. The 2nd reading requires 
  an absolute majority of 367 yes votes, meaning that, in reality, 
  60-70% of MEPs in the plenary chamber would have to vote yes on 
  each amendment. This complete rewrite, would happen within 3 to 4 
  months. The failure to adopt critical amendments would
  result in loopholes allowing software patents. Thus, a meeting
  of JURI (Legal Affairs Committee) on 2 or 3 February 2005 should be
  used to give the Parliament the option of demanding a new first 
  reading, (renewed referral) which may be the best way out.
  
  Further information can found at:
  
          http://kwiki.ffii.org/Juri0501En
          http://kwiki.ffii.org/RestartGuide0501En
  
  Also, help us spread the word: Join the Web Demo and register your site
  at http://demo.ffii.org/.
  
  Note that there are also persons working on getting a B-Item, see
  eg on the Netherlands and Danmark in http://wiki.ffii.org/SwpatcninoEn. 
  If you are active at that, please continue doing so. Otherwise, you 
  might better take a stab at someone from JURI; if there are JURI
  members from your country it is certainly the *right thing to do now*, 
  just delve into the aforementioned 
  http://kwiki.ffii.org/RestartGuide0501En .
  
  Kind regards,
  
  Holger Blasum, FFII, blasum@ffii.org

> Linux Reviews > News and headlines > 2005 News archive > January >
FFII (re)Starts advertisement complain against Patents