About six months ago, I discontinued my work in the area of patent policy and announced my reasons in this blog article. At the time, I had already mentioned the possibility of becoming involved with football policy. And that has actually happened: From early February on, I have been lobbying and campaigning again, independently but with the official support of Real Madrid, in Brussels and Strasbourg.

In late March, the European Parliament voted on a resolution on “the future of professional football in Europe”, and the European Commission is still working on a comprehensive White Paper on Sports.

My …

I have decided to withdraw definitively from the political debate on the European Patent Litigation Agreement (EPLA). The process itself may very well take several more years, but I will not do any more lobbying nor make any more public statements in this regard.

This year I made a lot of effort to inform politicians, the media and the public of the shortcomings of the present EPLA proposal, and I had the chance to make my contribution in the build-up to the European Parliament’s October 13 resolution, but I kept rather silent in recent weeks and will not speak out on this particular issue again. Until there is a new patent policy process in which I might participate, I will not comment on any patent-related issues. Last year I returned to the fray after three months of absence ? this time there definitely won’t be …

I wish I could say that Europe is free from software patents, but it is not. In contravention of the existing statutory law, the European Patent Office (EPO) continues to bend and break the law every day by issuing European software patents. And if the EPLA were to be ratified in its current form or any form near the present proposal, tens of thousands of existing European software patents would become strongly enforceable overnight.

Earlier this year, the NoSoftwarePatents Award campaign started in order to draw attention to the EPO’s unacceptable granting practice. That award is not linked to the original NoSoftwarePatents.com campaign I founded in 2004 and handed to the FFII …

In today’s vote on its patent policy resolution, the European Parliament approved the compromise text I had previously reported on, but it also voted in favor of a few amendments.

The most notable amendment was number 7. It inserted the subclause “which address concerns about democratic control, judicial independence and litigation costs” into article 1. Two of those three concerns (judicial independence and litigation costs) had been mentioned by commissioner McCreevy in his speech in the EP on September 28. But it was a good idea for the EP to reinforce those points.

Dutch …

In my most recent blog entry, I reported on the pretty reasonable compromise the three largest groups in the European Parliament have reached on the upcoming resolution on future European patent policy.

Meanwhile, Dow Jones has quoted Erika Mann MEP, a German social democrat who is very much in favor of software patents, as saying that the EP has, through this compromise, effectively “postponed” a decision on the EPLA. I would not contradict that assessment. The proposed resolution neither urges the Commission to drop its EPLA-related plans nor does it support the EPLA in its present form. It ends up saying very little, if anything at all, by accepting that the Commission may have …

In this blog I have repeatedly mentioned the European Parliament’s upcoming resolution on future European patent policy in general and the European Patent Litigation Agreement (EPLA) in particular. After a long and intense debate, which went mostly unnoticed by the general public, the three largest groups (international-level parties) in the EP - the conservative EPP-ED, the social democratic PES and the libertarian ALDE - yesterday sealed a pretty reasonable compromise.  Since those three groups have about 550 of the chamber’s 732 seats, it’s a mere formality for that compromise proposal to be carried by a solid majority. The vote will take place in Brussels on Thursday of next week (October 12).

Initially, the chief negotiators of EPP-ED and ALDE wanted the EP to say an unequivocal Yes to the Commission’s plans to get the EPLA ratified with the involvement of the EU. At the same time, the PES, Greens/EFA, …

At the recent EuroOSCON 2006 conference in Brussels, I was both a keynoter and a session speaker. I have meanwhile uploaded my presentation slides for my keynote, New Innovation Models, Policy-Making and Lobbying, and for my additional speech, EU Software Patents Reloaded, to this Web site (as PDF files).

Unfortunately, there was some confusion on the part of the organizers, due to which I only had my slides available for the keynote but not for the session on software patents. The organizers had to admit later that I had provided …

Almost six months ago, I firstly wrote about the effect the EPLA could have on software patents in Europe in this blog entry. I reiterated this concern on various occasions, including the Commission’s July 12 hearing. Earlier this month I published a two-page diagram and a three-page briefing document to explain the nature of the problem.

My related concerns are shared by a growing number of people and organizations. Yesterday, the Greens/EFA group in the European Parliament issued …

Yesterday afternoon, the EU’s internal market commissioner Charlie McCreevy spoke in the European Parliament’s plenary in Strasbourg. The speech and ensuing debate as well as the vote on a resolution of the EP that has meanwhile been scheduled for October 12, had been announced about a week before.

In his statement on future action in the field of patents, McCreevy conceded that the proposed European Patent Litigation Agreement (EPLA) leaves a lot to be desired in its present form. Firstly he acknowledged the recent motions for a resolution filed by four groups in the European Parliament criticizing the draft EPLA: “I am aware of some critical voices against the …

Klaus-Heiner Lehne, a German conservative MEP on the payroll of a leading patent litigation firm, is not amused at recent developments in the European Parliament, and in particular he is frustrated to see that other MEPs call for a more balanced approach to patent policy. Lehne much prefers commissioner McCreevy’s push for the EPLA, the Excessive Patent Litigation Agreement (the official long form starts with “European”, but “Excessive” would be more accurate).

The day before yesterday, Lehne vented his anger by issuing …