Questions EU Greens/EFA
- Software patents (or Directive on the patentability of computer-implemented inventions COM(2002)092)) Date: 16 november 2004 On 18 May 2004, the Competitiveness Council reached a political agreement for a common position on the directive on the patentability of computer-implemented inventions (COM(2002)092), but after translation into all EU languages, the adoption of its final version is still pending.
- What exactly is going on concerning the delay in the adoption of the text : How does the Council explain that its spokespersons invoke translation problems while translations are on the website of the Council and while sources from a permanent representation indicate that it will be sent back to Coreper given the disagreements ?
- Is it still appropriate to have this dossier tabled as an A item after a) the Dutch government has been asked by its national parliament to retract its support to the directive and b) the Polish delegation was not asked in the second and decisive round? The delegation said that, if asked in the second round, they would have abstained like they already had in the first round.
- How does the Council explain that numerous amendments (such as 36, 72, 76, 107, 108, 111, 119) of the EP have not been taken into account meaning, as result, that the current draft allows software patents, while this was unconditionally refused by the the EP ?
Original file: B6-0020/04 http://www2.europarl.eu.int/registre/seance_pleniere/textes_deposes/prop_resolution/2004/0020/P6_B(2004)0020_EN.pdf
The EU-presidency (currently the Dutch government) must answer these questions within three weeks.
Comment (Rebentisch)
The translations of the May council text are not perfect yet. As a German I can only speak for the official German translation. The German translation is premature. Other translations are said to be even worse. Note that the recent discussion in Bundestag (German Parliament) was based on an inproper translation. We are also concerned that the directive version of the EU-Parliament as voted on 2004-09-24 and the Commission's proposal are not available in all languages. The German translation of the EU parliament's version as submitted to the Council P5_TA(2003)0402 includes many severe mistranslations e.g. 'data processing' was translated to "Datenschutz" (data privacy)
- Artikel 3 Datenschutz (sic!) und Patentrecht Die Mitgliedstaaten stellen sicher, dass die Datenverarbeitung nicht als Gebiet der Technik im Sinne des Patentrechts betrachtet wird und dass Innovationen im Bereich der Datenverarbeitung nicht als Erfindungen im Sinne des Patentrechts betrachtet werden.
In short: The German and Austrian delegations to the Council only had a mistranslation of the Parliament's version available. It was often doubted whether Coreper was informed about the Parliament's version by the Irish presidency as the opinion of EU Parliament was ignored.
