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Re: [Fsfe-uk] [Fwd: Software patents]


From: Ralph Janke
Subject: Re: [Fsfe-uk] [Fwd: Software patents]
Date: Thu, 22 Jul 2004 19:25:39 +0100
User-agent: Mozilla Thunderbird 0.5 (Windows/20040207)

Alex Hudson wrote:

On Thu, 2004-07-22 at 10:58 +0100, Ian Lynch wrote:
This seems to be a standard letter sent out by Arlene McCarthy. Is it a
softening of her position or is it a distortion to try and curry favour?

It is bizarre and strange. She will defend Parliament's position?! I
hope so, but I don't believe it.

I guess they final wake up and remember the EU parliament has some teeth ;-)

It *is* true, I think, that the council position was more hardcore than
Arlene's. I am guessing that she is going to be pushing for the
amendments *she* wanted in (I can't remember what of hers was taken out,
but I would suspect they would be either weak/irrelevant to software
authors as a whole), and is hoping to get basically what she wanted by
being the "middle ground" between the extremes of the Parliament and the
Council.

I think quite frankly this whole issue is pretty academic at the moment.

If it is true what has been said, that there were irregularities while the voting was going on in the council, the ECJ will probably strike down any directive that will come from it. There is precedence, that the ECJ has struck down a directive or regulation (I don't remember, I have to look it up...) which the council did not inform the EU parliament about, even the parliament had no voting or veto rights. The ECJ seems to be very consistent in requiring a tidy legislative process....

I have still not found out what happens if the EU parliament would reject the current draft of the directive by the council. At least it would require the Council to vote anonymously, in the other case the directive would be dead by default.

I think it's more encouraging text than I've seen from her in the past,
but I'm not convinced it necessarily counts for anything at this point.

Maybe it is time to continue the pressure on the MEPs and MPs in order to keep it going ....

Ralph Janke




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