Row over conflicts of interest of Klaus-Heiner Lehne MEP
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25 June 2005 -- German web fora have been agitated by online discussions and news articles about apparent interest conflicts of Klaus Heiner Lehne MEP, who, as a coordinator of the European People's Party in the Legal Affairs Committee, strongly opposed all amendments that had any limiting effect on patentability or enforcability, and actively fought in JURI as well as in Berlin and elsewhere for widest possible patentability. It now appears that Lehne works as a Brussels lobbying consultant for multinational corporations who are the main clients of one of the leading lawfirms for patent litigation in Europe, which is also itself involved in patent lobbying and closely connected to lobbying organisations.
The discussions began with a posting in the Heise web forum which led to further investigations by some readers and a public letter of an SME initiative in Lehne's home region, which again spread to a Heise article and articles in other leading IT newsmedia as well as in Der Standard, an Austrian newspaper. FFII collected all these findings.
According to these findings, Lehne joined the Brussels and Düsseldorf offices of the international law firm Taylor Wessing as an MEP in September 2003, to become a partner and head of the division on "regulatory affairs", whose main job appears to be "strategy consulting" for companies that take special interest in the future direction of EU legislation. The main focus of Taylor Wessing is patent litigation, especially at the service of multinational companies. Taylor Wessing is also one of a few privileged companies who offer specially favorable conditions for the members of a German association BVDW, which is known to be a proxy of Microsoft.
While small and medium enterprises (!SMEs) from Lehne's home district have for many weeks failed to receive appointments from Lehne, Lehne has been telling audiences that the !SMEs in his home district want software patents.
More details about the media reports and some collections of relevant facts from the web can be found in our documentation of Klaus-Heiner Lehne.