Re: [Fsfe-uk] EU swpat - Ag and Fish attempt 2

[Philip Hands]

Alex Hudson wrote:
> On Sat, 2005-01-22 at 00:37 +0000, Philip Hands wrote:
>
> > > What exactly does Agriculture and Fisheries have to do with software
> > > patents?  Surely that council is responsible for agriculture and
> > > fisheries?
> >
> > I think that's rather the point.
> >
> > The sneaky lawyers who want to get rich by parasitising our industry were 
> > hoping that the dumb farmers wouldn't notice that this directive was being 
> > shoved through their council.
>
>
> I don't think that's quite the case 

Yeah, I know, but once I'd typed the above, it struck me as an amusing spin 
to put on the whole thing, that might provoke people to actually go and 
have a look at what was occurring.

[...]
> I don't think anything underhanded was going on, beyond the fact that
> the original discussion was flawed.

I agree absolutely, but the fact that the original discussion was flawed, 
and that the people representing the pro-patent position intentionally 
muddy the waters with their "technical effect"s and "as such"s makes the 
whole thing underhanded from the outset, so ascribing evil intent to them 
at every step seems entirely fair to me.  Especially when they're trying to 
squeeze the directive through before anyone has chance to object, which 
appears to be the case here.

> I believe the Polish action is to enable the EP JURI ctte to ask that
> the process be restarted, if indeed that is what they want to do (they
> wouldn't have the chance otherwise). The Council really aren't going to
> want to rediscuss their position, so it seems like the easiest way out
> at the moment...

That indeed seems to be the case.

Cheers, Phil.

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