Polish Parliament rebels

Summary: A pre-Xmas vote on so-called unitary patent in Europe, which already faces Polish opposition

There is some new software patents lobbying from the Business Software Alliance, a front group for Microsoft and its allies. The subject is very hot at the moment (in several nations and continents) and Europe is set to decide on the matter, albeit indirectly:

Now that all amendments and the voting list have been published, it is quite easy to anticipate what will happen on Tuesday December 11th, 2012, during the plenary vote of the European Parliament (EP) on the unitary patent regulation. Nevertheless few people would find a way to understand what will exactly be voted. And it is likely that the vast majority of Members of the European Parliament (MEPs) won't know themselves what is hiding behind the buttons they will push on. So here's the story behind shiny amendments numbers.

April has this important update about a country which helped crush ACTA:

The Polish Parliament has just asked the Polish government to get out of the unitary-patent agreement, because it considers the latter dangerous for businesses.

This is a reversal of what we saw in the EU Polish presidency [1, 2, 3, 4].

Here are some more details. "EU could abolish software patents on 11 December if vote goes our way," wrote this person, Erik Josefsson, with backing from influential Twitter users like FFII and its members.

Someone in the FFII mailing lists wrote: "The European Parliament is about to vote for a regulation on the unitary patent, during its plenary session, on December 11th, 2012.

"The purported goal to have a single patent covering the whole Union may be praiseworthy. But this regulation, up to its very title, is actually very deceiving. Indeed, its content leaves the European Union (EU) aside in many aspects, leading to a fragmented patent system, which will be untamable by the democratic bodies of the EU. Instead the “patent microcosm” will gain amazing powers, while its governance has been highly criticised, specially with regard to its practice of granting software patents, against the letter and the spirit of European patent law.

"You can change this fate by calling Members of the European Parliament (MEPs), urging them to table, before December 5th at noon, two compromise amendments. By doing so, two basic messages can be carried: POWER TO THE PARLIAMENT and NO SOFTWARE PATENTS!

"All links and information on http://call.unitary-patent.eu/campaign/call2/unitary-patent-plenary-12-2012?setlang=en"

In order to halt software patents in Europe we must pressure misguided politicians. They unite broken systems with more functional ones if they vote for "unitary" patent. Links to actions and contact numbers can be found in the aforementioned articles along with some guidance. ⬆