Berlingske: IT world’s eyes rest on Bendt

-> [ Patent news ]

Original article and translation Copyright 2005 Bjørn Willum. Published with permission.

In the EU Council of Ministers there is no longer a qualified majority in favour of the disputed software patent directive, but everybody pretends as if. The Danish Folketing has ordered the Danish Business Minister Bendt Bendtsen to throw the first stone today in Brussels

By Bjørn Willum

They will listen in breathless excitement to Bendt Bendtsen. Independent programmers in front of their !PCs all over Europe. But also in the boardrooms of IT companies such as Simcorp in the Østerbro quarter of Copenhagen one fears immeasurable consequences if the EU Council of Ministers on a meeting today in Brussels adopt the so-called software directive. A directive that will make it possible to take out patents on computer programs and, according to some critics, turn the development of software into a legal battle based on which IT companies that hire the best patent lawyers and not the best software programmers.

Such fears are exaggerated, according to Danish Minister of Economic and Business Affairs Bendt Bendtsen, who very much against his will has been mandated by the Danish parliament, the Folketing, to obstruct the directive today.

On the other side of the Atlantic, Microsoft founder Bill Gates will also be watching. To him billions upon billions are at stake – and his position is clear: The directive must be adopted. He has even, according to a statement from chief legal counsel Marianne Wier of Microsoft Denmark, personally threatened the Danish prime minister with closing the Microsoft affiliate Navision in the Danish town of Vedbæk and moving the 800 jobs to the United States if the decision goes against him. A statement the prime minister and Microsoft’s chief press officer have denied.

Majority crumbled away

The case is intricate because the directive already was negotiated and settled in Brussels last year but never formally adopted, which normally takes place as a formality during an ensuing meeting with nods – or even tacit consent – round the table.

But support for the proposal has crumbled away.

Nevertheless, no one has had the desire to throw the first stone. The Luxemburg EU presidency has therefore hoped that the proposal on a meeting today can be formally approved on the nod. Until last Friday when a majority in the Folketing’s EU affairs committee asked Bendt Bendtsen to denounce the software directive. Against his will, he must therefore today ask his colleagues in Brussels to restart negotiations.

And a renegotiation means that the proposal in its current wide-ranging form will tumble to the ground, because last time around it only just scraped through thanks to among others Denmark’s vote.

Humiliating defeat

Back then, Bendtsen had been given a different ambivalent mandate from the Folketing. He was preferably to vote in favour of a German compromise proposal that would have limited the possibilities of patenting software. And only if worst came to worst give his consent to a more wide-ranging proposal from the then Irish EU presidency that a number of small and medium-sized enterprises fear will ruin them.

Head of Department Michael Dithmer, whom Bendtsen on May 18 last year had sent to defend the Danish position, fought for the more limited German proposal but suffered a humiliating defeat by Irish minister Mary Harney, who chaired the meeting:

• “We are not happy,” Dithmer said when it had become Denmark’s turn to speak. To which the Irish minister to cheerful laughter in the room replied that
  • “none of us are totally happy”.
  “Oh, I know that, I know that,” Dithmer admitted. “If we were, we wouldn't be here,” the Irish minister continued. “I think we're not very happy, but I think we would, we would...“ “Thank you very much!” “... we would like to see a solution today.”

After which the Irish minister declared her own proposal adopted. With the Danish consenting vote in a key role.

No one wants to throw the first stone

Since then, the Social Liberal Party and the Social Democrats in Denmark have changed their minds – and the same has happened in several other European countries. A paradoxical situation has therefore emerged where the European Commission wants a directive voted through that there is, in actual fact, not the necessary qualified majority in favour of. And a directive which the European Parliament has, moreover, asked the Commission to withdraw.

Poland has made clear that it no longer favours the directive and is ready to support a renegotiation … if another country tables such a request. The same attitude is found in Germany, where the city council of Munich has curbed the city’s switch from Microsoft programs to free Linux software, which it is feared could become the target of hundreds of patent lawsuits if the software directive is to be adopted.

No one, however, wants to throw the first stone. But the Folketing says Bendtsen must. From Gdansk to Lisbon. From Copenhagen to Brussels. From Bill Gates to the members of Skåne Sjælland Linux User Group. The eyes of the IT world will today rest on Bendtsen.

bwi at berlingske.dk

www

Watch the video recording of the meeting of May 18, 2004 where the Danish Head of Department Michael Dithmer in 45 seconds were floored by the Irish minister during negotiations on the software patent directive at http://media.ffii.org/Council18may/denmark040518.mov