En email circulating in the European Parliament mentions a word-file where Kauppi amendments on RAND had the signature of Tim Frain (Nokia).
Original Message
- Sir - The "Computer-Implemented Inventions Directive" (CIID) is a blatant attempt, by the Council and Commission of the EU, to engulf software in the patent-system. If successful, it will expose European software-producers to crippling claims from predatory patent-holders and, thereby, paralyse all but a few big players in the field. Next week, the EU-parliament will vote on the CIID and will either approve it, reject it, or (applying the Rocard-amendments) knock the stuffing out of it. Whichever way it goes, the result is likely to be close, because leading members of two, large parliamentary groups, the European People's Party (EPP = "Conservatives") and the Alliance of
Liberal Democrats for Europe (ALDE = LibDems) are committed to supporting it, while the Independence and Democracy Group (ID, which includes the UKIP) and the Greens, the Socialists, and also many members of the EPP and ALDE, will vote against. The proposal of the CIID, by the Council and Commission, appears to have been tainted, from the first, via a "revolving door" with big
business. According to the EuroLinux Alliance, Microsoft's Francisco Mingorance worked with the Commission, in 2001, to produce the first draft http://petition.eurolinux.org/pr/pr17.html while, in 2002, Detlef Eckert, a senior official with the Commission, went to work for Microsoft http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/2523757.stm Also in 2002, seeing the CIID as a stitch-up on behalf of big corporations, the parliament threw out the proposal; but, in 2003 the Council+Commission brought it back, and, this year, it passed its parliamentary "committee-stage", under the diligent guidance of Klaus-Heiner Lehne and Piia-Noora Kauppi, of the EPP, and Janelly Fourtou, of the ALDE. Besides being an MEP, Lehne works for a legal consultancy called "Regulatory Affairs", which was founded, in 2003, by the Taylor-Wessing company. Taylor-Wessing is a firm of patent-lawyers. The following is from its web-site
http://de.taylorwessing.com/de/n_aktuell_det.asp?UID=49: Our services: Taylor Wessing has an enviable track record in advising IP-rich businesses. We are ranked a market leader in intellectual property law. We can offer our clients advice on the entire range of intellectual property disciplines. With regard to patent work, Taylor Wessing's expertise covers all aspects of contentious and noncontentious work. Current Issues in Patent Law: Members of the patent teams at Taylor Wessing continue to be at the forefront of developments in patent law across Europe. Such developments include: ! Implementation of the European Union's (EU) Biotechnology Directive ! EU's draft Directive on the legal protection of software ! Harmonisation of European patent litigation across the EU ! The creation of a European Community Patent and a Community Patents Court. If passed, the CIID will provoke a bonanza of patent-litigation. Might it not be suggested, therefore, that, in the matter of the CIID, Herr Lehne is susceptible to a conflict of interest? Lehne's loyal supporter, the lovely Ms Kauppi MEP, does not seem to have financial connections with the patent-lobby, but it does appear, from the respective ".doc-file", that her critique of the Rocard-amendments (as circulated to all MEP's) was written by Tim Frain, the Head of Intellectual Property at Nokia and a leading member of the big-business, pro-patent campaign. The most resolutely smoking gun, in this little line-up, however, is Mme Janelly Fourtou. Her husband is the CEO of Vivendi, and the Fourtou family owns options EUR40 million on Vivendi stock (maturing next November) the value of which depends largely upon the legal viability of software patents in Europe. Tom Wise MEP, UKIP (ID-Group)
