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Position Paper

On January 16, the European Commission (EC) announced a consultation on the future of the European patent system. An SAP official has already said that “it’s starting again”, meaning that this is the next round of the European software patent debate!

Companies, organizations and individuals who would like to tell the EU their opinion on what its patent policy should look like have until the end of this month to answer the EC’s questionnaire. But in order to do so, one has to wade through hundreds of pages of legislative proposals and related documentation. That’s why I wrote up a position paper that everyone can use to make his or her contribution and write to the EC:
www.no-lobbyists-as-such.com/PATSTRATpositionpaper.pdf

The 13-page PDF file answers the first four of the five sections of the EC’s questionnaire. The fifth section contains some general questions, which you can answer additionally if you want, but it’s no problem if you have no time for that.

However, it is important that you provide some information on you or your organization at the end. Please copy the following questions into your email and answer them:

(1) If you would like the Commission to be able to contact you to clarify your comments, please enter your contact details.
(a) Are you replying as a citizen / individual or on behalf of an organisation?
(b) The name of your organisation/contact person:
(c) Your email address:
(d) Your postal address:
(e) Your organisation’s website (if available):
(2) Please help us understand the range of stakeholders by providing the following information:
(a) In which Member State do you reside / are your activities principally located?
(b) Are you involved in cross-border activity?
(c) If you are a company: how many employees do you have?
(d) What is your area of activity?
(e) Do you own any patents? If yes, how many? Are they national / European patents?
(f) Do you license your patents?
(g) Are you a patent licensee?
(h) Have you been involved in a patent dispute?
(i) Do you have any other experience with the patent system in Europe?

The email address to which to send the PDF file and your answers is Markt-D2-patentstrategy@cec.eu.int

Please also write to the Commission in the event that you do not consent to the publication of your data with your answer.

If you would like to receive a quick overview so you know what the new EU patent policy project is all about, please have a look at this three-page PDF document:
www.no-lobbyists-as-such.com/PATSTRATquickfacts.pdf

Still have any questions? Feel free to contact me by email, but I don’t know how many questions about this I will get in the next days and weeks, so I can’t promise that I’ll be able to respond in great detail. If you plan to write to the EC on behalf of a company, please mention the size of your company (annual revenues, number of employees, or both) in your email. If you write to me in English or German, I will reply in the language in which your email is written. You can also write to me in French, Spanish or Italian, but I would then reply in English.

Note that the Foundation for a Free Information Infrastructure (FFII) has also written a position paper on this EU consultation, which is online at http://consultation.ffii.org. The replies that the FFII gives to the EC are very similar to mine. There are differences, but those are not fundamental. It is really your choice which of the prepared replies you would like to use. You may also consider supporting the FFII’s complaint (http://consultation.ffii.org/Complaint_Procedure) against certain aspects of the Commission’s approach to this consultation procedure.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, March 8th, 2006 at 11:47 am and is filed under Uncategorized, Patents, EU & EU Member States Politics, Information & Communications Technology Policy, Intellectual Property Rights. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.

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