
Software Patents > Reviews > CEC/BSA 02-02-20 > Liberal Group (Manders) 2003/06/17 Voting List
JURI 2003/04	Europarl 2003/09	CULT 2002/12	ITRE 2002/12	McCarthy 2003/02/19

17 Voting List

supports amendments from many sides, including most of those from McCarthy and ITRE, even where they contradict each other, but none of the amendments that really limit patentability. By supporting both program claims and freedom of publication, the effect of this voting list is that program claims are supported and freedom of publication related amendments are rendered "caduc", i.e. not put to vote. Much of the contradictory nature of these amendments may be due to the fact that ITRE report was written by a liberal (Plooij Van-Gorsel), that program claims were supported by a liberal (De Clercq). Some national liberal parties (e.g. UK Liberal Democrats, represented in JURI by Diana Wallis who also followed the Manders voting list) have published positions against software patents. Manders himself seems uninterested in limiting patentability but quite keen on cleaning up the institutional framework of the European patent system. Manders has recommended some measures for ending the parallelity between EPO and EU. These recommendations were however followed by very few MEPs even within the liberal group.

eldrvote.pdf
Arlene McCarthy 2003/06/17 Voting List: supports all amendments that further weaken limits of patentability and strengthen patent enforcability even beyond the CEC proposal, opposes all amendments that provide a means of limiting patentability or patent enforcability.
JURI 2003/04-6 Amendments: Real and Fake Limits on Patentability: Members of the European Parliament's Commission on Legal Affairs and the Internal Market (JURI) submitted amendments to the European Commission's software patent directive proposal. While some MEPs are asking to bring the directive in line with Art 52 EPC so as to clearly restate that programs for computers are not patentable inventions, another group of MEPs is endorsing the EPO's recent practice of unlimited patentability, shrouded in more or less euphemistic wordings. Among the latter, some propose to make programs directly claimable, so as to ensure that software patents are not only granted but achieve maximal blocking effects. This latter group obtained a 2/3 majority, with some exceptions. We document in tabular form what was at stake, what various parties recommended, and what JURI finally voted for on 2003/06/17.