[ http://fsfeurope.org/projects/wipo/statement-20050721.en.html ]
STATEMENT BY THE
UNITED NATIONS WORLD SUMMIT ON THE INFORMATION SOCIETY (WSIS)
PATENTS, COPYRIGHTS AND TRADEMARKS (PCT)
WORKING GROUP OF CIVIL SOCIETY
AT THE THIRD
INTER-SESSIONAL, INTER-GOVERNMENTAL
MEETING ON A
DEVELOPMENT AGENDA FOR WIPO
(Geneva, 20-22 July 2005)
The WSIS Patents, Copyrights and Trademarks Working Group of Civil
Society participated in the World Summit on the Information Society in
its first and second phase, addressing many issues of knowledge
control, software and the internet.
During the first summit in Geneva, we witnessed how the member states
of the United Nations formally agreed that knowledge dissemination and
sharing are fundamental building blocks of a knowledge society.
Quoting article 42 of the Declaration of Principles:
``Intellectual Property protection is important to encourage
innovation and creativity in the Information Society; similarly, the
wide dissemination, diffusion, and sharing of knowledge is important
to encourage innovation and creativity. Facilitating meaningful
participation by all in intellectual property issues and knowledge
sharing through full awareness and capacity building is a fundamental
part of an inclusive Information Society.''
It is in this spirit that we see the Development Agenda proposed by
the Friends of Development: patents, copyrights and trademarks are
designed to limit access and knowledge sharing. If applied wisely and
with measure, they can foster creativity and innovation. If applied
carelessly, they can kill both along with their potential benefit for
society: progress. This holds true for any nation in this world, rich
or poor, north or south.
The Friends of Development propose within their Development Agenda to
apply benchmarks to WIPO's policies and treaties in order to maximise
their benefit for all of humankind, including, but not limited to, the
developing nations.
The PCT Working Group strongly supports the proposal made by the
Friends of Development for a Development Agenda, from which we expect
positive consequences for the implementation of the WSIS plan of
action.
Furthermore, we wish to share some of the points that were important
for the debate during the World Summit on the Information Society and
that we feel will add substance to the Development Agenda proposal.
As the global civil society represented at the WSIS stated in its
essential principles of 14. November 2003: ``Human knowledge,
including the knowledge of all peoples and communities, also those who
are remote and excluded, is the heritage of all humankind and the
reservoir from which new knowledge is created.''
In the past years, we have witnessed an ongoing expansion of the
duration of copyright, and thus the timespan during which that
reservoir remains subject to limited access. At the same time, the
barriers to access have been raised by means of anti-circumvention
policies and approaches to put violations under criminal law.
In the information society, knowledge is circulating and outdated
faster, not slower: to adapt to that fact, the duration of copyright
should be shortened considerably. For this we would also like to focus
your attention on the WSIS Declaration of Principles, article 26:
``A rich public domain is an essential element for the growth of the
Information Society, creating multiple benefits such as an educated
public, new jobs, innovation, business opportunities, and the
advancement of sciences.''
The internet has not only paved the way for the knowledge age, it also
represents the latest seminal innovative step of humankind. It was
made at a time when the barriers to access were much lower. A
comparable breakthrough might be made impossible by these increased
barriers: we should reconsider these barriers to make sure we do not
disable the next breakthrough; this in particular refers to the
anti-circumvention provisions and approaches at criminalising
copyright violations, but is not limited to them.
Patents are another area in need of review that we identified
throughout the WSIS: they can be an excellent tool to promote
innovation, but their effects differ between areas.
Scientific studies for instance show that software is an area in which
patents are harmful: they stifle innovation and pose a significant
threat to competition; evidence for this has been collected by several
renowned institutions, including the [3]Massachussetts Institute of
Technology (MIT), the [4]Boston University School of Law, [5]Price
Waterhouse Coopers, [6]US Federal Trade Commission and [7]Deutsche
Bank Research.
Similar effects may exist in other areas and can serve to undermine
the patent system overall. We therefore encourage the Member States to
start a dialog with the goal of establishing clear and binding ruleset
to limit the scope of the patent system. These should take into
account the full diversity of areas and ensure the stability and
functioning of the patent system as a tool for innovation.
Given the scope and significance of these issues, only few of them can
be adequately dealt with on committee level. Mainstreaming the
development dimension into all of WIPO's activities requires the
continuation of the overarching IIM process.
We sincerely hope that progress, wisdom, courage and global vision
shall prevail in this necessary debate.
Statement by Mr. Georg C.F. Greve <greve(a)fsfeurope.org>
Free Software Foundation Europe, President
UN World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS)
* Civil Society Patents, Copyrights, Trademarks (PCT) Working Group,
Co-Coordinator
* First phase Civil Society representative, German Governmental
Delegation
* European Caucus, Coordinator
1. WSIS/WSA Contributory Conference in Vienna, Austria
2. Round table in Venice, Italy
3. Podium discussion about software patents in Kiel, Germany
4. ChaosControl conference in Vienna, Austria
5. WIPO meeting in Geneve, Switzerland
6. GNU/Linuxtag in Karlsruhe, Germany
7. Karlsruhe Memorandum on software patents
8. Europython in Göteborg, Sweden
9. 1ere Conference Nationale de Logiciels Libres, Aleppo, Syria
10. Lobbying against software patents
11. Karsten Gerloff finished internship with FSFE
1. WSIS/WSA Contributory Conference in Vienna, Austria
Beginning of June, the World Summit Award (WSA) contributory conference
to the United Nations World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS)
took place in Vienna, Austria. Speakers included Austrian Chancellor
Wolfgang Schüssel, Professor Joseph Weizenbaum from MIT, John Perry
Barlow and FSFE's president, Georg Greve.
During the reception in the Federal Chancellery of Austria and the
event, Karin Kosina and Georg Greve spoke with many people inside and
outside the Free Software community and gave several radio and video
interviews.
2. Round table in Venice, Italy
Stefano Maffulli was present at a round table on the topic "Art culture
knowledge democracy". Other participants included the Brasilian Minister
of Culture Gilberto Gil, the Italian Creative Commons Public Lead Juan
Carlos De Martin and many more.
3. Podium discussion about software patents in Kiel, Germany
The German Federal Small/Medium Enterprises Association (Bundesverband
mittelständischer Wirtschaft, BVMW) invited Georg Greve to a podium
discussion about software patents in Kiel, Germany where he discussed
the sense of patents on software algorithms with Dr. Gaston Willière,
Director of the European Patent Office (EPO) Computer Directorate and
other panelists from small and medium enterprises: The overall result
was that no proprietary or Free Software commercial enterprise has
anything to gain from software patents.
4. ChaosControl conference in Vienna, Austria
ChaosControl is a yearly conference organised by the faculty of law at
the university of Vienna. This year's topic of the conference was
"information freedom", and Karin Kosina spoke about software patents.
5. WIPO meeting in Geneva, Switzerland
On the occasion of the continued Inter-sessional Inter-governmental
Meeting (IIM/2) on a Development Agenda for WIPO (World Intellectual
Property Organisation), Georg Greve and Karsten Gerloff once more went
to Geneva to support the reform of WIPO. In FSFE's official observer
capacity, Georg Greve issued a statement to "include Free Software in
all its programmes and activities, educating its member states on the
social and economic benefits of the Free Software model." After the
very positive response for doing this during the first meeting,
Karsten Gerloff once more documented the local proceedings in his blog
where you can find more information.
http://www.fsfeurope.org/projects/wipo/statement-20050620.en.htmlhttp://www.fsfe.org/Members/gerloff/blog/weblog_view
6. GNU/Linuxtag in Karlsruhe, Germany
The GNU/Linuxtag (sic!) is not only the biggest Free Software event in
Europe - it also became a central meeting point for people from Free
Software organisations all over the world. The list of representatives
that were part of the FSFE booth team is impressive: Bernhard Reiter,
Georg Greve, Werner Koch, Joachim Jakobs, Karsten Gerloff, Matthias
Kirschner and Volker Dormeyer (all Germany), Karin Kosina, Reinhard
Müller (both Austria), and Ciaran O'Riordan (Ireland/Belgium) from the
FSFE, Niibe Yutaka, Tanaka Akira, and Ueno Daiki from the Free
Software Initiative Japan, Beatriz Busaniche, Federico Heinz (both
Argentina), and Fernanda G. Weiden (Brasil) from FSF Latin America,
Didier Clerc, Florian Verdet, Mario Fux, and Myriam Schweingruber from
FSFE's Swiss associated organisation Wilhelm Tux, Cornelius Wasmund
and Michael Kallas as volunteers that helped with the booth, Mohammad
Khansari from Iran, Pablo Machón and María Ruiz from Spain and Gareth
Bowker from UK.
Once again, Volker Dormeyer, our volunteer booth coordinator, did an
amazing job by preparing the booth, organising hotel rooms, finding
sponsors for booth hardware and thousands of other things to make this
event as successful as it was.
Several people have posted links to photos from the event on their
Fellowship blog space.
https://www.fsfe.org
7. Karlsruhe Memorandum on software patents
On GNU/Linuxtag, the FSFE started an initiative for a memorandum
against software patents. More than 200 people spontaneously signed
the text, many people already added their signature after it was
posted on the web.
http://www.fsfeurope.org/projects/swpat/memorandum.en.html
8. Europython in Göteborg, Sweden
At the Europython conference, Hendrik Sandklef held a speech about "Free
Software - Free Society" and Swedish team member Mathias Klang talked
about the Creative Commons project, in which he also is involved. Both
also took part in a panel discussion about software licensing questions.
9. 1ere Conference Nationale de Logiciels Libres, Aleppo, Syria
Karin Kosina opened this follow-up event to the highly successful Free
Software workshop in Damascus earlier this year with an introduction to
Free Software. In addition to a general outline of our philosophy and
vision, the talk focused on Free Software as a way to develop an
independent and sustainable IT industry. She also gave several
interviews for Syrian TV and radio stations. Karin intends to continue
working closely together with Free Software advocates from the region,
and had many interesting discussions regarding potential future
developments in the Middle East.
10. Lobbying against software patents
The Software Patents directive has been heating up and FSFE's full-time
Brussels representative, Ciarán O'Riordan, has been working mostly
inside the European Parliament building this month. Besides meeting the
MEPs to inform them directly, he has been briefing newly arrived
lobbyists to prepare them for their meetings, connecting information
from bodies outside the Parliament with the MEPs, and coordinating
between FSFE and FFII.
Ciaran also made sure every MEP received a copy of the Karlsruhe
Memorandum:
http://www.fsfeurope.org/projects/swpat/memorandum.en.html
And he would like to thank the FSFE translators team for their work on
making a pre-vote summary available in non-English languages.
11. Karsten Gerloff finished internship with FSFE
After four very busy months, June was the last month for the internship
of Karsten Gerloff, who described his numerous experiences as part of
FSFE in his blog. In these four months, Karsten became an integral part
of the FSFE Team -- his friendly, reliable and energetic personality
earned him great respect and FSFE thanks him for all his good work.
http://www.fsfe.org/Members/gerloff/blog/
If you are a student and can see yourself spend some time becoming part
of an extremely busy and lively, multi-national and distributed
political non-governmental organisation, you will find more details at
http://fsfeurope.org/contribute/internship.en.html
You can find a list of all FSF Europe newsletters on
http://www.fsfeurope.org/news/newsletter.en.html
Free Software Foundation Europe:
No software patents in Europe, requests EPO review instrument
After years of struggle, the European Parliament finally rejected the
software patent directive with 648 of 680 votes: A strong signal
against patents on software logic, a sign of lost faith in the
European Union and a clear request for the European Patent Office
(EPO) to change its policy: the EPO must stop issuing software patents
today.
"This outcome does not affect patents on high-tech inventions in any
way," explains Stefano Maffulli, Italian representative of FSFE:
"High-tech innovation has always been patentable, and even if the
directive had been passed with all proposed amendmends, it would have
remained patentable. It is important to point this out because the
proponents of software logic patents have tried to confuse people
about high-tech inventions being subject of this directive."
FSFE's president, Georg Greve adds: "The parliament understood this
when it amended the directive in the first reading to keep high-tech
innovation inside and software outside the patent system."
"Unfortunately, the council of the European Union ignored this
decision of the Parliament and removed those amendments. Many MEPs
were appalled at this obvious corruption of democratic process that
day and seem to have lost faith in seeing their amendments treated
with more respect this time."
"Rejection of the directive became the very last option to send a
clear and strong signal against software patents in Europe," Greve
continues. "The Free Software Foundation Europe commends the European
Parliament on this decision: in the interest of harmonisation we would
have preferred a directive along the lines of the first reading, but
we understand that rejection became the last realistic option to avoid
doing irreparable harm to European economy."
Jonas Öberg, vice-president of FSFE: "This reaffirms the 1973 European
Patent Convention (EPC), which excludes software from patentability.
The European Patent Office (EPO) has largely ignored this central
convention and granted approximately 30.000 software patents in the
past years: this must stop today! The EPO should not be allowed to
further ignore European policies!"
Georg Greve explains the proposal of FSFE: "Much trouble was caused by
the inability of the European Union to hold the European Patent Office
responsible for acting against agreed-upon policies: unlike other
parts of a democratic executive, the EPO is not liable for the
decision it takes. We propose to establish an EPO supervision
instrument that holds the EPO management liable for its decisions and
prevents further patent system degradation."
About the Free Software Foundation Europe:
The Free Software Foundation Europe (FSFE) is a charitable
non-governmental organisation dedicated to all aspects of Free
Software in Europe. Access to software determines who may
participate in a digital society. Therefore the Freedoms to use,
copy, modify and redistribute software - as described in the Free
Software definition- allow equal participation in the information
age. Creating awareness for these issues, securing Free Software
politically and legally, and giving people Freedom by supporting
development of Free Software are central issues of the FSFE. The
FSFE was founded in 2001 as the European sister organisation of the
Free Software Foundation in the United States.
Further information: http://www.fsfeurope.org
Karlsruhe Memorandum on Softwarepatentability needs your signature!
Georg Greve, president of Free Software Foundation Europe (FSFE) asks
"everyone to sign up to the Karlsruhe Memorandum on software
patentability [1]: preserve your freedom to be creative!" Started last
Saturday during GNU/Linuxtag in Karlsruhe, Germany the memorandum was
signed by more than 200 people and 26 companies - among them Katja
Husen, from the federal board of the German Green Party, Christa Dahme,
federal board member of the German Confederation of Trade Unions (DGB),
Dr. Wolfgang Kowalsky, European Trade Union Confederation (ETUC) and
Annette Mühlberg, Head of eGovernment, ver.di - United Services
Union-Headquarters, Berlin.
FSFE's goal: urge MEPs to once more make the necessary amendments to
turn the European software patent directive "into a directive that
allows patents on computer-aided inventions, but clearly prevents
software patenting."
As the memorandum highlights, patents on software are among the worst
threats to knowledge-based economies, because they "make computers less
secure, less reliable and prevent competition on a basic level. Lack of
competition and uncalculable legal risks raise the cost of ICT and cost
jobs wherever the economy depends upon them."
According to the Free Software Foundation Europe "the most essential
discoveries in the field of ICT were successful because they were not
patented, for instance the invention of the World Wide Web by Tim
Berners-Lee. If software patents are enacted, the world will never know
which discovery could have been the next World Wide Web."
The European "centre of expertise for Free Software" cites a number of
international scientific studies supporting its arguments: the German
Monopolkommission, [2] which regularly reports about dangers to
competition to the Federal Government of Germany; the Massachussetts
Institute of Technology (MIT) [3]; the Boston University School of Law
[4]; Deutsche Bank Research [5]; Price Waterhouse Coopers [6]; and the
US Federal Trade Commission [7].
1 http://fsfeurope.org/projects/swpat/memorandum.en.html
2 http://swpat.ffii.org/archiv/zitate/index.de.html#mopoko0207
3 http://www.researchoninnovation.org/patent.pdf
4 http://www.researchoninnovation.org/swpat.pdf
5
http://www.dbresearch.com/PROD/DBR_INTERNET_EN-PROD/PROD0000000000175949.pdf
6
http://www.pwc.com/Extweb/pwcpublications.nsf/docid/EC6DE73A846581CE80256EF…
7 http://www.ftc.gov/os/2003/10/innovationrpt.pdf
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--
Joachim Jakobs <jj(a)office.fsfeurope.org>
Media Relations - FSF Europe (http://fsfeurope.org)
Join the Fellowship and protect your freedom! (http://www.fsfe.org)