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BLOG@IP::JURPatent Attorney Axel H Horns' Blog on Intellectual Property Law.
Monday, December 20, 2004Anti-Patent Campaigners fail to understand EU Council Process.Up to now it looks as if the Council of the European Union ("EU Council" for short) in its Agriculture and Fisheries Configuration is set to formally adopt the Draft Directive on the patentability of computer-implemented inventions (Document 11979/04) just tomorrow. There is a big deal of brouhaha amongst various groups of anti-patent campaigners concerning this step. They argue that in Europe, democracy is now in danger because of the EU Council is set to formally adopt the Draft Directive in its Agricultural and Fisheries configuration as an "A" item without a discussion, not in the Competitiveness configuration as a "B" item with a discussion. For example, Mr. Jan Wildeboer is quoted in Groklaw as follows:"[...] The situation in Europe concerning software patents is moving from democracy to anarchy. [...]"They are all missing the point. On the meeting tomorrow, the representatives of the EU Member States will not act as politicians (this is what they already had done  in May earlier this year) but, so to say, more in a fashion like a notary public: They (or their Officials accompanying them on their trip to Brussels) will have to scrutinise whether or not the English text as tabled is identical with that one on which in May 2004 a political agreement was reached, and whether or not each of the bunch of Official translations of the Draft Directive into the various other Official languages of the EU is accurate. If both conditions are met, the EU Council will do right to formally rubber-stamp the political agreement reached earlier.
I had described the gist of this two-step procedure in an earlier posting. As long as all Official languages of the EU Member States have the same weight with regard to text of secondary EU Law, there seems to be no other choice than first to choose a "pilot language" for politically deliberations on the matter in order to rubber-stamp the bulk of translations later. This is exactly what most probably will happen tomorrow.
Of course, in theory there would be a very good solution for any of such translation-related problems: Choosing English as a "Primary Official Language" for conducting all political deliberations throughout the EU, and in a second step, producing certified but non-binding translations into all other Official Languages of the EU in a later but purely administrative step, without any further involvement of the EU Council on the political level. However, it seems also to be quite clear that such solution is infeasible at least at the moment. In particular the EU Member States of the "Club Mediterrané" (i.e. the EU Member States in the Mediterranean) surely would strongly object to any such attempt to reduce the Babylonian language mix within the EU.
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