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#ies: Heise Newsticker reports about strange Europarl procedure, cites FFII as source.

#Wta: as of 2003/06/26 this page said that the vote would be on monday 30 as the 5th and final item of the last session of a long day's work.  Last modification had been 2003/06/25 19:58

#9tW: On thursday 2003/03/19 the voting date was changed from September 1st to July 1st, the first possible opportunity, only 13 days after the JURI vote.

#pio: News report and discussion (in french) on linux.fr about the McCarthy group's attempt to rush the European Parliament into a vote on the software patent report, 10 days after its publication.

#ltW: The French press agency %(t:Transfernt.net) reports about the strange procedures at the EP, cites FFII.

#oWW: More Contacts to be supplied upon request

#oou: Given these strong concerns in all political camps, there is ground for doubt on the chances for the report to pass the plenary next week.

#aEW: The Greens/EFA called the JURI decsions %(q:disastrous) in their press release and cite their co-president Daniel Cohn-Bendit:

#arn: SAP developer Dr. Bernhard Runge does not need the test:

#bee: The lack of clarity was already criticized by Reinier Bakels, one of the experts appointed by the JURI committee itself for a report, at a conference on May 8th 2003 in the European Parliament. The rapporteur was %(pm:asked) to test her rules on given examples offered in an attempt at debate, but declined.

#ope: The JURI report even allowed claims to programs on its own, on media or signal (patents forbiding publication or distribution of software, not only its use or inclusion in devices), despite the European Patent Convention stating that programs for computers are not inventions and therefore not patentable as such. Bernhard Kaindl, developer at SuSE Linux AG was worried about this decision:

#ien: While claiming to restrict patentability and clarify the law without changing it, the comittee rejected all amendments (passed in other committees, and presented in JURI too by MEPs from PSE, EFA/Greens and GUE/NGL) which would have defined the meaning of key terms such as %(q:technical) and %(q:invention). Piia-Noora Kauppi MEP (Conservative, Finland) also endorsed these amendments after declaring in a %(dh:panel at the Dorint hotel in Brussels, May 7th 2003) that the European Patent Office %(q:has been running wild).  Carles-Alfred Gasòliba i Böhm MEP (Liberal, Spain) stresses the necessity of these delimiting amendments:

#dWm: Miquel Mayol i Raynal (Regionalist, Perpinyà, Spain) MEP lamented %(q:that small and medium enterprises are being ignored, being them that generate most employment in Europe, and that a petition with over 140000 signatures and another with 30 of the most leading European computer scientists is disregarded). For him %(q:blocking competition and free creativity in software is not good for consumers or cultural diversity, and it is a serious problem for the European economic fabric.)

#tst: The result of the vote was found to be contradictory, and as British Andrew Duff MEP (Cambridge, UK, Liberals, ELDR) wrote, contrary to available opinions:

#olu: The European Parliament Legal Affairs and Internal Market (JURI) committee voted last tuesday on the software patents directive COM(2002)92.  The committee passed the rapporteur's draft with some modifications.  The resulting report shows the opposing views in the committee. One third of the members opposed to the report, and only 3 amendments from the opinions of the Industry and Culture committees passed (2 of them despite the opposition of the rapporteur).

#dokurl: Permanent URL of this Press Release

#ffii: About the FFII

#eurolinux: About the Eurolinux Alliance

#media: Media Contacts

#PWe: European Parliament divided on software patents vote next week

#title: Divided European Parliament rushed to vote on software patent directive

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