Czech Senate against Software Patents, calls for opposition to Council version
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On 31st March 2005 Czech Senate (the upper chamber of the Parliament of the Czech Republic) on its plenary session voted for a recommendation towards the government of the Czech Republic and Czech members of European Parliament, asking them to regard the Council's agreement of 18th of May 2004 as illegitimate and to turn the fake limitations on patentability, which are found in the Council's text, into real ones.
Resolution of Czech Senate (summarising translation)
The Czech Senate recommends:
- to the Czech government
- support new renegotiation of the Software Patent Directive
- support clear qualification of the statement that computer programs as such can not be patented
- reject endeavours to speed up acceptance of the Directive
- support efforts of EU member countries who have been opposing the Council's "political agreement" of 18th May 2005
- to Czech members of European Parliament
- support the recommendations above
Quotes
Dan Ohnsorg of FFII.cz says:
Very few people in the Czech republic stand to benefit from software patents. We don't even have a company like Siemens or Nokia with a big software patent portfolio. The Czech share in the software patents illegally granted by the European Patent Office is near zero percent. Yet the ministry in charge has, under the influence of the patent office and of diplomatic conformism, taken a hardline pro-patent position in the EU Council, and it seemed that nobody in the Parliament cared what they were doing. Now that has changed, but it remains to be seen whether our Parliament can really exert any influence on those anonymous diplomats and patent office administrators who legislate in our name in the EU's supreme legislative body.
Links
Resolution of Czech Senate (in Czech)
Voting (in Czech)
Transcription of the debates (in Czech)
About FFII -- http://www.ffii.org
The Foundation for a Free Information Infrastructure (FFII) is a non-profit association registered in several European countries, which is dedicated to the spread of data processing literacy. FFII supports the development of public information goods based on copyright, free competition, open standards. More than 500 members, 1,400 companies and 80,000 supporters have entrusted the FFII to act as their voice in public policy questions concerning exclusion rights (intellectual property) in data processing.
