descr: Together with the European Commission (CEC) and the European Parliament (EuroParl), the CEU is one of the three pillars of the European Union, which jointly legislate in a %(e:co-decision procedure). It is a forum where the national governments and their specialised ministries meet. The question of how to limit patentability is handled in the %(q:Council Working Party on Intellectual Property and Patents). This council has been holding increasingly frequent meetings to discuss the European Commission's proposal for a software patentability directive and come up with a counter-proposal. The national delegations are mostly composed of national patent office representatives or people whose career path is confined to the national patent establishment and who are factually dependent on this establishment in many ways. Some delegations, such as the french and belgians, have comprised independent delegates and been fairly critical of the CEC proposal. Others have been even more pro-patent than the CEC. All have focussed on textual questions and caselaw rather than on what kind of output they want from the legislation in terms of patents granted/rejected and economic policy objectives. title: Council of the European Union (CEU) and Software Patents # Local Variables: ; # coding: utf-8 ; # srcfile: /ul/prg/src/mlht/app/swpat/swpatgasnu.el ; # mailto: mlhtimport@a2e.de ; # passwd: XXXX ; # feature: swpatdir ; # dok: swpatceu ; # txtlang: en ; # End: ;