Maybe we should sign up! God bless! --------------------------------------------------------------------- http://swpat.ffii.org/papers/europarl0309/demands/index.en.html#sign
The European Parliament has voted for legislation that would effectively exclude software and business methods from patentability. However European patent legislation is still largely in the hands of ministerial patent experts, many of whom have for years been pushing for unlimited patentability. This situation calls for close attention and resolute action by national parliamentarians and concerned citizens. 1. We are concerned that 1. The European Patent Office (EPO) has, in contradiction to the letter and spirit of the written law, granted tens of thousands of patents on rules for computing with conventional data processing equipment, below termed "software patents". 2. The European Comission has proposed to legalise these patents and make them uniformly enforcable in Europe. In doing so, it has disregarded the manifest will and well-argued reasoning of the vast majority of software professionals, software companies, computer scientists and economists. 3. Prominent proponents have tried to deceive and intimidate the European Parliament. They have presented the proposal as a means of excluding software and business methods from patentability and have threatened that the European Parliament would lose its chance of participation if it voted for a real limitation of patentability. 4. Since the European Parliament has refused to be deceived or intimidated, influential patent professionals in various governments and organisations are now trying to use the EU Council of Ministers in order to sidestep parliamentary democracy in the European Union. 2. For these reasons we recommend the following: 1. We urge the European Patent Office as well as national patent offices to immediately stop granting patents on business methods and data processing methods in whatever verbal clothing, and to apply Article 52 of the European Patent Convention correctly according to conventional methods of interpretation of law. 2. We urge the members of the EU Council of Ministers to refrain from any counter-proposals to the European Parliament's version of the draft, unless such counter-proposals have been explicitely endorsed by a majority decision of the member's national parliament. 3. We urge members of national parliaments to formulate clear national policies on the limits of patentability and to make sure that their government's representatives in the European Council are faithfully implementing these policies. 4. We demand that all legislative proposals, including those from the European Parliament and the member states, be rigorously tested against a test suite of sample patent applications to see whether they would beyond any doubt lead to the desired results and would not leave room for any more misinterpretations. Other parts: 3. Signatories 4. Annotated Links 5. Questions, Things To Do, How you can Help -- Sign the petition against Senator Lacson: http://www.petitiononline.com/no2ping/petition.html --[Manny [EMAIL PROTECTED] Member: Philippine League for Democratic Telecommunications "Affordable Access for All" --[Open Minds Philippines]--------------------[openminds.linux.org.ph]-- -- Philippine Linux Users' Group (PLUG) Mailing List [EMAIL PROTECTED] (#PLUG @ irc.free.net.ph) Official Website: http://plug.linux.org.ph Searchable Archives: http://marc.free.net.ph . To leave, go to http://lists.q-linux.com/mailman/listinfo/plug . Are you a Linux newbie? To join the newbie list, go to http://lists.q-linux.com/mailman/listinfo/ph-linux-newbie
