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I wrote to Graham Watson, who is a Somerset MEP (he lives in Langport) and he was kind enough to write back very quickly. Since he is outwith the Devon/Cornwall area I thought you might like to see what he says. What's this about pure software patents being excluded? Tony Sumner ------------------------------------------------------------------------ On Fri, Jun 24, 2005 at 05:58:09PM +0100, Graham Watson MEP Constituency Office wrote: Dear Mr Sumner, Thank you for your email concerning the proposed Directive on the patenting of computer-implemented inventions. As far as I and my colleagues are aware, the line that we have taken does not conflict with Liberal Democrat party policy. Pure software patents, per se, are excluded from the Directive and we have supported amendments which seek to clarify further what is included and what is excluded. However, you will appreciate that within the context of the European Parliament we also have to take account of the wider views of the ALDE Group and it was this voting line that we followed. The Group is currently analysing the Committee vote in preparation for a full discussion prior to the July plenary vote in Strasbourg. We are currently receiving advice and mail from all sides of the debate. We cannot ultimately please everybody, but be assured that your views are taken into consideration. Once we have a final position agreed in the Group we will send you a full statement. Yours sincerely, Graham Watson MEP Member of the European Parliament for South West England and Gibraltar and Leader of the Alliance of Liberals and Democrats for Europe in the European Parliament -----Original Message----- From: Tony Sumner [mailto:tony@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx] Sent: 24 June 2005 16:59 To: info@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx Subject: Software patents Dear Graham Watson, I am writing to ask you to support the stance against software patents, which is due to be voted on in the European parliment, on 5th to 7th of July, To highlight the problem please take a look at the following quote from www.knoppix.org: "Soon the European Parliament and the Council of Ministers will again decide about the legalisation and adoption of so-called 'software patents' in Europe, which are already used by large companies in other countries to put competitors out of business. This can lead to the termination of many software projects ... in Europe because the holders of the over 30,000 already granted 'software patents' (currently without a legal foundation) can claim exclusive rights and collect license fees for trivial things like 'progress bars', 'mouseclicks on online order forms', 'scrolling within a window' and the like. Software developers will have to pay the 'software- patentholders' for using these features, even in their own completely self-developed applications which can completely stall the development of innovative software for small and medium companies." The situation is desperate. Microsoft have already said they will sue if software patents are implemented, so here we will have a large multinational billion dollar corporation suing very small companies Are you prepared to see small sucessful software businesses in England, and there are many in the South West, go bankcrupt? Thank you for your time, I hope you can support us. Yours sincerely Tony Sumner (web-site designer) Wellington -- The Mailing List for the Devon & Cornwall LUG Mail majordomo@xxxxxxxxxxxxx with "unsubscribe list" in the message body to unsubscribe. FAQ: www.dcglug.org.uk/linux_adm/list-faq.html