Aehso’s Output

EU rails through Computer Implemented Inventions Directive

The EU have approved the CII Directive (see previous blog entry). Disappointing.

Exactly how they did this seems to be very interesting indeed - did the Luxemburg Presidency contravene the EU Council’s rules in a bid to avoid changing the A-item status of the directive to that of a B-item?

The reasoning offered for pushing the directive:

“so as not to create a precedent which might have a consequence of creating future delays in other processes”

In the face of concerted opposition (by the European Parliament no less), does that stand up as a democratic reason for pushing this directive through? I think not.

A week ago, I sent a casual email to the office of the Internal Market and Services Directorate General asking for some information regarding the process. Did I get a response (even an automated PFO?) - you guess:

From - Tue Mar 01 12:18:36 2005
X-Mozilla-Status: 1001
X-Mozilla-Status2: 00800000
Message-ID:
Date: Tue, 01 Mar 2005 12:18:35 +0000
From: John O'Shea
User-Agent: Mozilla Thunderbird 1.0 (Windows/20041206)
X-Accept-Language: en-us, en
MIME-Version: 1.0
To:  Charlie.Mc-Creevy@cec.eu.int,  Oliver.Drewes@cec.eu.int
Subject: Request for information regarding IMS and OHIM role in current EU
 comission debate on software patent directive.
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit

Mr McCreevy,
    I understand you work with both the Internal Market and Services
Directorate General or the OHIM in the EU Commission.

    I would appreciate it if you can define your office's role in the
reported decision by the European Commission to decline the European
Parliament's request for a restart of the legislative process regarding
the software patents directive.

    As a participant in the european software industry, this information
would be invaluable in order to be able to gain a better understanding
about how decisions are being reached in the highest levels of the EU
that will directly affect the industry in which I, and my colleagues,
work in.

Best Regards,

John.

Thanks Charlie.

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