[SC.LUG] [Fwd: [Fsfe-uk] Fwd: Software patents: EU Commission negates democracy]

[Richard Smedley]

-------- Forwarded Message --------
SOFTWARE PATENTS:
EUROPEAN COMMISSION NEGATES DEMOCRACY BY
DECLINING EUROPEAN PARLIAMENT'S REQUEST FOR A RESTART

Brussels (28 February 2005).  The European Commission has reportedly
declined the European Parliament's request for a restart of the legislative
process on the controversial software patent directive.  The EP had taken a
three-tiered decision to ask the Commission to begin the process from
scratch: On 2 February, the Legal Affairs Committee (JURI) of the European
Parliament near-unanimously decided to make this request.  On 17 February,
the EP's Conference of Presidents (i.e., the group chairs) unanimously
backed that decision.  A week later, on 24 February, the plenary of the EP
reinforced this by unanimously "inviting" the Commission to review its
proposal for a software patent directive although there was no more formal
requirement for the plenary to vote on this subject.

NoSoftwarePatents.com received an indication on Friday from the office of a
vice president of the Commission and has now heard that the Commission today
informed several journalists of its decision.

Florian Mueller, the manager of the pan-European NoSoftwarePatents.com
campaign, condemned the Commission's decision in the strongest terms: "A
wannabe Napoleon who heads the Commission and a Microsoft puppet that runs
the DG (directorate general) in charge have decided to negate democracy.
Now we call on the EU Council to demonstrate a more democratic attitude and
to reopen negotiations of its Common Position at the forthcoming meeting of
the Competitiveness Council on Monday (7 March)."

At a press conference hosted by NoSoftwarePatents.com and the FFII
(Foundation for a Free Information Infrastructure) in Brussels on 17
February, French MEP Alain Lipietz had warned that the EP would perceive a
denial of its restart request as an "insult".  Other parliamentarians made
similar statements on other occasions.

NoSoftwarePatents.com's Mueller had previously expressed his concern that EU
Commissioner Charlie McCreevy "may be more interested in what is good for
Microsoft than for Europe as a whole".  His worries stem from the fact that
Microsoft is Ireland's largest tax-payer since the company supplies the
entire EU out of its facility in Dublin where it has a "tax haven".  Mueller
explained that "with its tax-haven program for the European subsidiary of
U.S. corporations, once-poor Ireland has within less than two decades become
Europe's wealthiest country by various statistics."

NoSoftwarePatents.com has for some time had a text on its Web site that
discusses the position of various EU member countries on software patents,
and makes reference to Ireland's role:
http://www.nosoftwarepatents.com/en/m/politics/members.html

Recently, NoSoftwarePatents.com added a more detailed text that explains the
economic dependence of Ireland upon Microsoft and similar U.S. corporations:
http://www.nosoftwarepatents.com/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=397

Microsoft's push for EU software patents drew major attention recently after
a leading Danish financial newspaper quoted Microsoft Denmark's chief
lobbyist who said that Bill Gates had threatened the Danish government with
killing 800 jobs unless the EU were to legalize software patents.  The
Danish social democrats responded with a press release that "blackmail shall
not dictate Danish policy".  Microsoft subsequently denied that Gates made
the respective statement but did admit that intellectual property rights and
their connection with the location of jobs were discussed in the respective
meeting.

About the NoSoftwarePatents.com Campaign

The NoSoftwarePatents.com campaign was launched on October 20th and is
supported by three IT companies (1&1, Red Hat, and MySQL AB).  The views
expressed by the campaign are those of the campaign manager and not
necessarily those of the aforementioned companies.

Through Web content in 17 languages, the campaign addresses a pan-European
audience.  More information on the campaign is available on its Website.

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 at nosoftwarepatents.com




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Richard Smedley <richard.smedley03 at ntlworld.com>