I, Luca Saiu (saiu AT cli DOT di DOT unipi DOT SPAM SOMEONLE ELSE it) organized a little campaign at the University of Pisa, where I study, giving away flyiers and spreading information. I convinced many fellow students to sign letters to the Minister Marzano and Italian MEPs and MPs chosen by the signers themselves. I personally printed and sent letters, to be definitely sure they actually left.
You can find the material we sent (in Italian) at http://www.cli.di.unipi.it/~saiu/brevetti.html .
My small initiative started at the end of September 2004, and is still in course.
As of 10 October 2004 we sent about 120 letters, but by now we received just one answer from On. Raffaella Mariani (now we're going to start phoning). On. Mariani was extremely friendly, and from her response I can easily deduce that she also got informed by herself (we pointer her to http://swpat.ffii.org ), and she didn't just read what we said.
On. Mariani sent a formal "Interrogazione con risposta urgente in commissione" to the Minister of Communitary Politics, to the Minister of Innovation and Technology and to the Minister of Cultural Goods.
The interrogation is well written and reflects our concerns. Its text is available at http://www.cli.di.unipi.it/~saiu/interrogazione-mariani.pdf . The interrogation was also signed by On. Piero Ruzzante, On. Beatrice Magnolfi and On. Walter Tocci.
Here follows a (rough) translation of the Interrogation from Italian into English.
Interrogation to the Minister of Communitary Politics, to the Minister of Innovation and Technologies, to the Minister of Cultural Goods
to know, with the premise that:
- a draft of directive dictating unlimited patentability without restrictions of algorithms and "computer-implemented" commercial methods is about to be approved by the Union Member States;
- the european Council of ministers about Competitiveness held in Bruxells on 17 and 18 May rejected without any justification the amendments which the European Parliament had approved to the original directive on sofware patentability;
- the text approved by the Council of ministers is to be considered even worse then the original draft, because it potentially allows to patent any computer program;
- such a legislation would be damaging to the european productive tissue bound to modern technologies, which is made up for the most part by small and medium enterprises who use or produce software;
- a strong patent protection in this field is an advantage only for who already registered a large number of patents and so can make non-belligerancy agreements with other large enterprises, it artificially creates "entrance barriers" to new enterprises and limits the free competition in the field: -
which the Government position is about this matter, which initiatives it wants to undertake to avoid the approvation of a directive disastrous for innovation, competition and growth of an information economy; and last if Government doesn't think it's useful to re-create a serious political scrutiny about the impact of the proposed text.
On. Raffaella Mariani, On. Piero Ruzzante, On. Beatrice Magnolfi, On. Walter Tocci
