Reality Bites

Otra vez de Pesca con las Patentes

Vuelta a empezar.

Otra vez se vuelven a utilizar artimañas para intentar aprobar el acuerdo ilegítimo del Consejo de la UE sobre las Patentes de Software, y otra vez se utiliza una reunión de los ministros de Agricultura y Pesca. Veremos qué ocurre este lunes 24.

A continuación copio/pego la carta enviada por la FFI llamando a la movilización.

Dear FFII supporter,

The adoption of the Council's software patent agreement seems to have been postponed once more. We heard this from various knowledgable sources, but it has not been publically confirmed by the Council presidency.

If the adoption is postponed, the Parliament will have the chance to restart the procedure[1]. Even Klaus-Heiner Lehne MEP (German Christian Democrat), who is presiding over the decisions in the legal affairs committee (JURI) and has gone to some lengths to resist the restart while spreading the latest fallacies of the patent lobby[2], agreed that he would be open to the restart project if the Council postponed once more.

We will see a lobbying blitz of unprecedented proportions on the part of the patent industry in the coming weeks and months.

If we can obtain neither a discussion in the Council nor a restart in the Parliament, we enter a second reading. In that case the newly elected Parliament will have only 3-4 months to react and it will factually need a 60-70% majority against the Council's proposals. This would be a highly risky game, and we would also lose our best chances of melting the ice in the Council.

Yet even in a 2nd reading we should win. We are offering proven solutions, whereas the patent industry is throwing nothing but money and FUD at the MEPs.

We believe we *will* win this year's battle, if we manage to

(1) raise a fraction of the funds that the patent industry is spending, so as to pay for our Brussels office (i.e. a 5-digit sum). It was the groundwork of our representatives that gained the trust of MEPs in 2003. Fruitful working relationships have been built ever since, but our fulltime staff has to live on something, and our coffers are empty.

(2) properly communicate with you. The webdemo campaign must now be regularly renewed, with new model letters, banners and and instructions for action. We need to show our friends in the Parliament what a large and well-informed community is working with us.

For the time being we would like you to

* subscribe to the europarl-parl mailing list[3] and prepare to come to Brussels for at least two days in the period 24 January - 2 February to meet JURI MEPs or their assistants.

* continue to ask your government to delay (on the basis of Art. 3 of the EU Council's Rules of Procedure[4]) any attempts to adopt the 18 may text as a common position, continue to demand a recount of votes (B-item).

* stay tuned to http://demo.ffii.org/ and help us us reorient and enlarge the webdemo during the next days and weeks.

* find your local MEP[5], read up on the software patent dossier, think about how you motivate your MEPs or their assistants to communicate with you.

* make a donation[6] for the coming months' Brussels operations.

Yours sincerely,

Hartmut Pilch, Erik Josefsson, Jan Macek,
Bernhard Kaindl, Christian Cornelssen

[1] http://wiki.ffii.org/EuroparlSwpat04En
[2] http://wiki.ffii.org/Juri050119En
[3] http://lists.ffii.org/mailman/listinfo/europarl-parl/
[4] http://ue.eu.int/uedocs/cms_data/docs/2004/6/21/Councils%20rules%20of%20procedure.pdf
[5] You may want to use the "My MEP" tool in http://aktiv.ffii.org/
[6] http://www.ffii.org/assoc/money/account

Saludos.