OutOfControl0506010En

Open Letter for a tight Democratic Control of the Council of the Banana Union

"Dear Members of a National Parliament of Europe,

Your minister XXX has the heavy responsibility to open or not the flood gates for software patents in Europe (1). Currently, in the complete secrecy of their dark rooms, anonymous patent administrators of the Council Working Group on Intellectual Property (Patents) are already deciding the position of your country on this issue, without any control from public eyes. When their proposal lays on the table in the Council, it will be practically impossible for it to be changed. These officials represent their national ministries but, due to the apparent technicity of the matter, they are often selected among the staff of their national patent offices. Since, most often, ministers follow their cabinets, these officials have decisive power.

In the first reading of this directive, the official documents issued by this Working Group have resulted in the most extreme text for unlimited patentability of software and business methods (2), which has been formally approved on last 7th March, the Luxembourg Presidency using an unknown procedure to ignore the will of three countries which wanted to reopen negotiations (3). Access to those documents was denied until the very last minute "due to the sensitive nature of the negotiations and the absence of an overriding public interest" (4).

The Luxembourg Presidency has proposed a very hurried agenda on which anonymous patent administrators of each country should take position on the amendments proposed by the Legal Affairs Comitee of the European Parliament. This initiative of the Council will probably result in weakening the transparent work of the Parliament, influencing Members of the European Parliament to vote for amendments on which the Council anonymous patent administrators can agree with.

The leaked minutes of the secret meetings organised last 27th May and 3rd June (5) show that most anonymous patent administrators still profit from their anonymity by promoting the extension of patentability, in the interests of the European and National Patent Offices, in which most of them play an active role. It is not rare to find the same people who are participating in those meetings at the Administration Board of the European Patent Office.

Therefore, in light of the hurried agenda (6) defined by the Presidency, we strongly urge you:

  1. to not give the Luxembourg Presidency a mandate for discussions on this issue if the position of your country has not been approved by your democratic assembly;
  2. to draft a resolution so as to ask an extension from 3 months to 4 months for the Second Reading of the Council;
  3. to urgently schedule an agenda with discussions in your Parliament on this crucial issue for survival of a competitive and open information society.

We would be very happy to see democracy and transparency taking the step over the dictatorship and the darkness of the most powerful body of the European Union.

The undersigned,

Type your name here"

References

1 http://swpat.ffii.org/log/intro/index.en.html

2 http://swpat.ffii.org/log/04/cons0518/index.en.html

3 http://wiki.ffii.org/Cons050307En

4 http://www.ffii.org/~jmaebe/swpat/council20040423.html

5 Leaked minutes of 27th May and 3rd June meetings of Council Working Group on Intellectual Property (Patents): http://swpat.ffii.org/log/05/cons0527/

6 http://wiki.ffii.org/TrilogAgendaEn

REVISED EDITION! Please Comment!

Hello there, I have revised the letter completely, reordering the structure and the english. Please comment. Find the annotated original and the new version here: [OutOfControl0506010EnRevised]

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