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CONTENT SYNDICATION 
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CONTENT SYNDICATION
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BLOGROLL OPML:
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Search in IPJUR.COM
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BLOG@IP::JURPatent Attorney Axel H Horns' Blog on Intellectual Property Law.
Monday, June 26, 2006Grandfather's War Memoires.Some weeks ago, Mr. Florian Müller had put his memoirs on the history of the EU Draft Directive on the patentability of CII on the Internet for free download. Now he has indicated directions on ecommercetimes.com. Ms. Jennifer LeClaire had introduced the interview with Mr. Müller as follows:"[...] Florian Mueller is at it once again. The founder of the NoSoftwarePatents.com campaign that led to the European Union's landslide vote against a proposal for a software patent directive is ready for the next battle.Well, Mr. Müller's opus is a voluminous recollection of events of the public dispute on the patentability of CIIs in 2000 to 2005 but it is without any critical reflection of the structure and doctrines of patent law. Underlying his book, there is a set of first principles which is never called into question, and on top of that list there is the assertion that the EU intended to 'legalise software patents' which of course are, in Mr. Müller's view, very, very bad. Not even a shadow of an analysis of the underlying concepts of law is given, and Mr. Müller clearly does not intend to discuss the problems arising out of the distinction between pre-grant measures (exclusions), on the one hand, and post-grant measures (exemptions), on the other hand. He also does not intend to discriminate computer-implementable inventions from computer-implemented inventions. And he does not discuss the different effects of the patent system on the enormous variety of business models out there. He simply tells a mostly anecdotal story on how he achieved that what he thinks is a success. Surely patent people reading Mr. Müller's book could gain some insight into the way Internet based lobbying can work today. As he puts it in his interview: "[...] LinuxInsider: Do you feel that small lobby groups can replicate your success in the EU parliament?In 2005, Mr. Müller and his allies could well have crippled the entire patent system. It was a very narrow escape, indeed. If some last-minute efforts of the industry had not been successful in catalysing an emergency exit to the proceedings of the second reading, the Parliament might well have voted in favour of very detrimental amendments to the Draft Directive, effectively ruining the patent system in its entirety for decades. And some of the patent people from outside of the industry appeared not to have really understood the importance of the Internet in political disputes of the twenty-first century. Setting up and maintaining a static website updated from time to time by inserting some euphonic and balanced statesmanlike formulas might perhaps no longer be sufficient to convince politicians, journalists, and the general public. Technorati Tags: Patents
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