Time and Place

2004-04-14 Wednesday 10:00 (before the demo)

Belgium / Brussels / Rue der Wiertz = Wiertzstraat / Nr. 60

European Parliament

AG2 (Antonio Spinelli Building, 1st floor, Area G, Room Nr 2 "Petra Kelly")

Contacts

• press040414@ffii.org:mailto:press040414@ffii.org
• Mr Holger Blasum, FFII, 0049-174-7313590
• Ms Laurence Vandewalle, Greens/EFA, 0032-2-28-41695

Purpose

FFII and signators of Call for Action II (software companies, members of the European Parliament) explain what's wrong with the software patent policies of the EU Commission and Council.

Topics

• Dialogue of the Deaf between Parliament, Council Working Party and Commission
• positions of national policymakers on the directive
• Council agenda, Nokia letter, MEP positions etc
• experiences of software innovators and other stakeholders
• position statements by members of the European Parliament
• patent statistics, state of research

Speakers

• Hartmut Pilch (DE)
• Jonas Maebe (BE)
• Jonas Bosson (Sweden's "inventor of the year")
• Dr. Jean-Paul Smets-Solanes (director of Nexedi.com, economist and informaticist, author of studies on software patents, multiple software patent owner)
• Oliver Lorenz (head of legal affairs, Magix Software AG, Berlin-Paris)
• Roland Orré (director of Neurologic.se, owner of software patents)
• Bent Hindrup Andersen MEP MEP (EDD, DK)
• Nelly Maes MEP (EFA, BE)
• Claude Turmes MEP (Greens, LU)

Speeches

Turmes

explains that Council working party rejected all amendments, did not address problems raised by the Parliament, tries to impose will of big corporate lobbies on the Parliament without legitimation, says this is a kind of Putsch.

Maes

interviewed by Belgian TV in French and Flemish

Maebe

interviewed by Belgian TV in French and Flemish

Smets

explains that Nexedi applies for patents in order to be able to take advantages of Irish tax privileges, to move company to Ireland or Holland one day so as to compete with the big companies who are doing this, and to have pawns for vengeance against big competitors like Microsoft or SAP in his hand. In case these attack Nexedi, Smets will close the firm and sell the patents to a competitor of the aggressor.

Ireland may be supporting the Council's extreme pro patent positions because large companies are concentrating their patent operations and with them headquarters in Ireland in order to benefit from the Irish patent tax privileges.

Links

Planning Wiki

help is needed

Latest PR

could be split into several PRs, exceptionally high potential of attracting interest, help in divulging needed