[Ffii-uk-action] Patents - Innovation (was Re: [Fsfe-ie] Charlie McCreevy)

Jonas Maebe jonas.maebe at elis.ugent.be
Sun Aug 15 12:24:29 CEST 2004


On 15 aug 2004, at 08:46, Seth Johnson wrote:

> It would
> also be good to see if we can't hook up SW patents with the role of 
> Louis
> Michel (Belgium), whose assignment to Development and Humanitarian Aid 
> is
> apparently a counterbalance to Peter Mandelson, the Trade Commissioner 
> from
> Britain.

I don't see how Development and Humanitarian Aid has much to do with a 
software-patents-for-Europe directive. If we were trying to instill 
software patents on developing countries it might be different, but in 
this case I don't think it's really his responsibility.

I also don't know how much he would support us, remember that this is 
the guy who said about the Council ignoring the EP something like "Is 
there a problem? I was not aware that sometimes good legislation comes 
from the Parliament. I will look into this". The issue of the ezine of 
EUReporter in which this was printed doesn't seem to be online anymore, 
though (it was somewhere after our April conference, probably the 21 
April issue).

The most important people are probably (my information comes from a 
newspaper article):

* McReeny (Ireland): internal market
* Reding (Luxembourg): information society and media
* Verheugen (Germany): enterprises and industry
* Kroes (The Netherlands): competition (she's the successor of 
Bolkestein and comes from the same party; I don't know whether she's as 
bad as he is, I just asked on nl-parl)
* Potocnik (Poland): science and research
* Buttiglione (Italy): justice (and freedom and safety) and vice 
president. He's the guy who in the Council asked where the rest of the 
German amendment suddenly went to.
* Mandelson (UK): trade
* Almunia (Spain): maybe, he's responsible for economic and monetary 
affairs
* Barroso (Portugal): president, wants to sell Europe better to the 
public opinion


Jonas




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