FFII announcement

[Polychronis Ypodimatopoulos]

Dear FFII (aktiv.ffii.org) supporter,

Friday, September 24, is the first anniversary of the
plenary vote by the European Parliament that stopped the
EU Commission's push towards unlimited patentability.
The Parliament also reaffirmed the limits imposed by the
European Patent Convention, and expressed the will and the
deliberate position of the democratic (and "economic") majority
in the text of the directive.

The European Parliament was the first institution in the
path of EU legislation that was not dominated by players from
the patent establishment.  It was the first institution that
took the concerns of more than 250,000 petitioners (currently
around 350,000), thousands of European SMEs, a number of recent
economic studies as well as the opinions of dozens of famous
scientists into account.

The European Parliament fulfilled its task of democratic
decision-making so thoroughly that subsequently the patent
operatives from the Council working group had to reveal their
exactly opposing intent.  They did so with unprecedented
effrontery, by removing all essential amendments introduced
by the Parliament, adding extremist counter amendments,
and using a very dubious voting procedure for their counter
proposal on May 18, 2004, in order to produce the semblance
of a qualified majority.

We ask you to show your support for the position adopted by the
EP by announcing September 24 as a Day of European Democracy.
You can do this by including a hyperlinked banner on your web
page(s).  See http://en.eu.ffii.org/sections/eu_democracy_day
for details.

If your national government is still officially supporting
the Council version of the directive, you could also use this
event to renew contacts to your national MPs, request personal
meetings, and ask them to put a debate on the EU software
patent directive on the national parliament's agenda.

No government should support the Council's anti-Parliament
course without legitimation by its national parliament.
Every little step towards this goal has substantial permanent
value.  The EU Democracy Day page mentioned above contains
some related pointers.

Yours sincerely,

Holger Blasum, Bernhard Kaindl, Christian Cornelssen
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