Aehso’s Output

ICT Ireland resort to the Chewbacca Defence.

I’m harping on here a but but the mis-information is still flowing so it should be countered. ICT Irelandhave posted a press release that can only be described as using the Chewbacca Defence. The press release opens with the following contradictory paragraph:

ICT Ireland was disappointed by today’s decision of the European Parliament to reject the Common Position on the Computer Implemented Inventions Directive. We feel that the European Parliament has lost an opportunity to further Europe’s development as a knowledge economy. However, while the adoption of the Common Position would have been the ideal, no legislation is better than legislation that would have damaged Ireland’s competitiveness.

So let me get it straight then, they were disappointed that the EU didn’t introduce legislation that would have damaged Ireland’s competitiveness. Right then.

The release then states

However, there were several unhelpful amendments proposed to the Common Position, which sought to alter patent law as it currently stands, and we do welcome the decision of the MEPs to reject these amendments.

Unhelpful to whom? The 21 cross-party amendments were gaining support because they clarified several vague definitions in the original CIID. However, as Hartmut Pilch, president of the FFII states:

In recent days, the big holders of EPO-granted software patents and their MEPs, who had previously been campaigning for the Council’s “Common Position”, joined the call for rejection of the directive because it became clear that the 21 cross-party amendments championed by Roithova, Buzek, Rocard, Duff and others were very likely to be adopted by the Parliament. It was well noticeable that support for all most of these amendments was becoming the mainstream opinion in all political groups. Yet there would not have been much of a point in such a vote. We rather agree to the assessment of the situation as given by Othmar Karas MEP in the Plenary yesterday: a No was the only logical answer to the unconstructive attitude and legally questionable maneuvers of the Commission and Council, by which this so-called Common Position had come about in the first place.

Ah, so it wasn’t going their way so they preferred maintain the status quo than shoot themselves in the foot by recommending a Yes vote.

Lastly the ICT statement says

Patents provide incentives for companies to undertake R&D - no company, large or small, will invest heavily in research and innovation unless they know that they can protect the results.

Ah, denial, denial, denial. The grovelling to the Irish MEPs is only slightly less dignified.

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