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The Council of Ministers of the European Union has consistently pledged an unconditional allegiance to the patent faith and a resolve to "promote patent protection" or, in codewords, "promote innovation" or "promote entrepreneurship", all meaning the same, namely promote the interests of the governmental patent institutions whose anonymized "working party" formulates the Council's policies. The lawmaking of the EU Council on software patents can serve as a textbook example on the loss of accountability and democracy in the European Union's lawmaking procedures.
News & Chronology
2005-01-02 LU/EU Council Presidency Priorities: Promote Patents, Conclude Software Directive in 2005
2004-11-18 Consolidated Version of political agreement published, english
2004-07-08 Provisional Agenda
2004-05-18 Political Agreement
2004-03-22 Council Adopts new Rules of Procedure
2003-09-24 Italian Council Presidency's press release about the European Parliament's decision
2003-03-01 Council pledges desire to "protect patents" for "computer-implemented inventions"
2002-11-00 Council Patent Working Party publishes common position in favor EPO practise
Some more info about the Council
europa.eu.int: Council Rules of Procedure and of Art 3 in 2004-12 ConsRegl0412En
[[http://europa.eu.int/rapid/start/cgi/guesten.ksh?p_action.gettxt=gt&doc=PRES/03/259|0|RAPID&lg=EN&display=|participants of the last competitiveness council meeting]]
Corrigenda, Addenda
The text of the link The Register on Council on the static page could be enhanced to read:
The Italian Council Presidency's press release about the European Parliament's decision consists of pure pro-patent misinformation, concluded by the following paragraph:
A recent study commissioned by the Intellectual Property Institute, based in London, concluded that patentability of computer-related inventions has contributed to an increase in the numbers of industries linked to computer programmes in the USA, and in particular to an increase in the numbers of small and medium-sized companies and independent software creators who have developed into large and important concerns.
This study is not recent but an old scam from DG Internal Market from 2000, see http://swpat.ffii.org/papers/indprop-ipi00/, written by a team of well-known software patent lawyers. All the economic evidence contained in the study points out that software patents are stifling innovation.
