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15/6/2000
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21/6/2000
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20/7/2000
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Statements

Sponsors

EuroLinux Warns

Software Patents Still on EC Agenda

EuroLinux Alliance

petition.eurolinux.org

For immediate Release

Munich and Paris, 21/6/2000 - The Eurolinux Alliance of European commercial software publishers and non-profit associations warns : Software Patents are still on the European Commission Agenda. The General Directorate for Internal Market at the European Commission has not changed its ideologic position. It still favours software patents.

The Eurolinux Alliance has called for more than a year for a scientific review of the general economic and social impact of software patents. The General Directorate for Internal Market at the European Commission, under the direction of John Mogg, seems to have chosen to answer to this fair request through a disinformation campaign. Information bits currently leaked to the press suggest that the European Commission has adopted a directive on community patents and that it has abandoned its plans on Software Patents. However, much of this information should be considered with extreme care.

In order to clarify the debate, EuroLinux requests the General Directorate for Internal Market to provide a public answer to the following 3 questions :

1. Has the directive been approved in a finalised written form ? Is it possible to access to a written version of the proposed directive ? Where ? Why not already ?

2. Will the General Directorate for Internal Market promote a "no software patents" approach ? If it is the case, can this be published officially by the General Directorate for Internal Market ?

3. In case the General Directorate for Internal Market does not promote a "no software patents" approach, will the European Commission treat community patents and software patents in a single directive or separately ?

Answering clearly to those simple questions would be very desirable in order to guarantee that the General Directorate for Internal Market, under the direction of John Mogg, treats the "software patent" issue with the general interest in mind. In particular, it is not desirable for anyone that the General Directorate for Internal Market generates yet another juridical disaster, as it has done with the biopatents directive which is currently rejected by an increasing number of European states, although it had been previously approved by the European Commission.

References

The EuroLinux Petition for a Software Patent Free Europe - http://petition.eurolinux.org
The EuroLinux File on Software Patents - http://petition.eurolinux.org/reference

EC Press Release on Community Patent - http://europa.eu.int/rapid/start/cgi/...

Financial Times Deutschland - http://www.ftd.de/tm/te/FTD962824480673.html?nv=hptn

About EuroLinux - www.eurolinux.org

The EuroLinux Alliance for a Free Information Infrastructure is an open coalition of commercial companies and non-profit associations united to promote and protect a vigourous European Software Culture based on Open Standards, Open Competition, Linux and Open Source Software. Companies members or supporters of EuroLinux develop or sell software under free, semi-free and non-free licenses for operating systems such as Linux, MacOS or Windows.

The EuroLinux Alliance has co-organised in 1999, together with the French Embassy in Japan, the first Europe-Japan conference on Linux and Free Software. The EuroLinux Alliance is at the initiative of the www.freepatents.org web site to promote and protect innovation and competition in the European IT industry.

Press Contacts

France & Europe: Stéfane Fermigier sf@fermigier.com +33-6 63 04 12 77
Germany & Europe: Harmut Pilch phm@ffii.org +49-89 127 89 608
Denmark and Northern Europe: denmark@eurolinux.org
Belgium: belgium@eurolinux.org

Permanent URL for this press release

http://petition.eurolinux.org/pr/pr3.html

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