[Sussex] A letter to our MEPs and MPs

[Mark Harrison]

Steve,

I am, alas, rather more cynical about politicians than you. I don't believe
that any appeal to "doing the right thing" will have useful impact on my
elected representative (Crawley, Labour.)

The tack I'm planning to taking is broadly as follows:

Enacting this law will place European and British businesses at a
significant disadvantage to US ones.

Until now, this has only affected the competitiveness of European companies
large enough to try to compete in the US market (and such companies have had
the resources to operate in the US framework on an appropriate footing.)

It has not affected the competitiveness of European companies competing with
US companies within the European market. However, if the Software Patents
proposals are enacted, this will change. The combination of certain classes
of "inventions" becoming patentable, coupled with international treaties,
means that US companies will be able to register their US patents in Europe,
claiming the US patent registrations as prime face evidence of their
entitlement.

This will, in fact, render many European pieces of software in immediate
breach, since many, many European software products use techniques that have
not been patentable in Europe, but are patented in the States. Because these
techniques have not been patentable in home markets, few European companies
hold such patents in the States. US companies, however, have a 10 year "head
start", not in the development of intellectual property, but in the
mechanics of the patenting of the same.

This would place European countries at a significant disadvantage, and
therefore potentially be in breach of the Treaty of Rome.

For this reason, I urge you to oppose the new law.


M.