2004-05-17 COREPER Official Spreads Misinformation About the "Compromise"

This Monday, a participant from the Committee of Permanent Representatives was spreading misinformation and described the "compromise" as a "compromise between Microsoft and Linux".

This really shows the level of misunderstanding many of the governments still have.

But many people are already quite well briefed and know that this is not the case. If you, as a news reporter, are confronted with this misinformation, you could better put this in the following manner:

"It's a compromise between Microsoft and the European Patent Office"

A few days later Frits Bolkestein found a similar wording at the Council Press Conference ("compromise between US-style patenting of software without an inventive step and Linux-style giving everything for free").

If one were to enter the discussion at this level, one could assert that the Commission is now explicitly acknowledging that it is representing Microsoft (incidentally, the Irish proposal is based on a document which was leaked from the Business Software Alliance, which contained the Commission proposal plus other lobbying text before the Commission officially publicised them) and many of the Member States are representing the European Patent Office (and the national patent offices) rather than their own constituencies whom patent policy is supposed to serve. In England, for example, patent policy is being developed and decided on by the Patent Office rather than any kind of reasonably participatory and representative legislative process.

This "compromise" is not any sort of coming to terms between "Microsoft" and "Linux," nor between the patent establishment and the public interest. Rather, the European Patent Office is declaring that it has come to terms with Microsoft, articulating a position in their proposal that is evidently regarded as acceptable among those whose private interests are being catered to in these privileged discussions, a position that is apparently being couched in those discussions as if the only real conflict is between one narrow constituency ("Linux" developers) that supposedly needs to be placated, and those who wield influence within those privileged venues.

Those who lose out in this double-layered perversion of the term "compromise" are European small and medium size companies.