UK Liberal Democrat MEP Candidates and Software Patents
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"IP expert" Diana Wallis MEP voted with ELDR "IP expert" Toine Manders
But the "professional IP expert" of the Lib Dems/ELDR is Sharon Bowles
Andrew Duff MEP critical but insecure, afraid of "destruction of IP assets" etc, voted also with Diana Wallis (only rejected program claims, but not voted for any other limitations).
Maybe also due to the partie's IP Lobbyist Patent Lobbyist Sharon Bowles
- Versions of a standard letter from Elspeth Atwooll and Liz Lynne seem worryingly reassured by the new Council text
A longer variant from Sarah Ludford MEP seems more concerned. But she thinks that software patents should be available "for new inventions only, rather than computer programs as such" (?) -- and again, apparently does not see through to the emptiness of the Council text.
A new, more personal letter from Elsepth Atwooll MEP, which does now appear to take much more on board the 'weakness' of the Council text.
Both letters from Elsepth Atwooll are based on a press release from Diana Wallis after the vote of September 23 - as you can see, the critique to the new letter is the same, but it's good to see some apparently personal comments at the end of this letter.
UK Libdem Youth enraged about their MEPs, demand clear position against software patents
FFII UK on Liberal Democrats
Overview of UK Lib Dems - photos, contact infos and links to MEP web pages: http://www.ldeg.org/meps.html
Web site of the UK Liberal Democrats: http://www.libdems.org.uk/
The Position of the national UK LibDems is defined as follows from their policy paper 54: "Making IT Work - Policies for Information Technology"
2.2.5 We do not believe that the citizen as consumer will be well served if a wholesale failure in the copyright system leads to a drying up of creativity as the financial incentives disappear. But we also recognize that there are circumstances in which protection systems can have thecontrary effect of stifling creativity against the public interest. We are especially concerned about the use of patents in the area of computer software in this respect.
2.2.6 There are usually many ways to achieve the same objective using computer code. The public benefits from the fact that different teams of programmers will work on solving problems and release their separate solutions as competitors in the market.
The specific code each team has written is protected by copyright.
Allowing a wide definition of inventiveness for patents in the field of software could lead to a reduction in this creative activity. This might be justifiable if there were evidence that the software industry as a whole were suffering because of an inability to secure revenue for research and development but there is no evidence that this is the case as the sector remains vibrant and growing.