Planet FFII

Some Member of the European Parliament are asking the Commission and the Council when they plan to respect the Lisbon Treaty on ACTA, where the next Trade Commissioner Karel DeGucht said in a hearing that the Lisbon Treaty does not apply to the ACTA negotiations, because the confidentiality rules were negotiated before the entry into force of the Treaty.

Here is the full text of the question, Mr Josefsson is publishing it in a proprietary Microsoft Word format (which is used by EU bureaucrats) on his website, but not in a plain text or html, so here it is:

EUROPEAN PARLIAMENT
FORM FOR TABLING PARLIAMENTARY QUESTIONS
To the: COUNCIL , COMMISSION

ORAL QUESTIONS

Oral Question with debate (Rule 115)

Question Time (Rule 116)

WRITTEN QUESTIONS

Written Question (Rule 117)

Priority Written Question (Rule 117 (4))

AUTHOR(S): Carl SCHLYTER, Eva LICHTENBERGER, Christian ENGSTRÖM, Niccolò RINALDI, Daniel CASPARY, Syed KAMALL, David MARTIN, Helmut SCHOLZ, Bernd LANGE, Robert STURDY

SUBJECT: Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA)

TEXT:

The plurilateral negotiations on an Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA) are being conducted under a premise of confidentiality agreed upon by participants on a request by the US Government.

At a hearing on 12 January 2010, Commissioner-designate Karel De Gucht said that he will respect the confidentiality agreement among ACTA participants.

In preliminary discussions with Parliament on a new Inter-Institutional Framework Agreement, the Commission agreed on 27 January that it is committed to a reinforced association with Parliament through immediate and full information of the Parliament at every stage of negotiations on international agreements (including the definition of the negotiation directives), in particular on trade matters and other negotiations involving the consent procedure, to give full effect to Article 218 TFEU of Parliament, while respecting each institution's role and safe compliance with new procedures and rules for the respect of the necessary confidentiality.

- How will the Commission honour its commitment to a reinforced association with Parliament with regard to the ACTA negotiations?

- When will the Commission grant Parliament access to all documents relating to ACTA, in particular the ACTA negotiation mandate by the Council, the minutes of ACTA negotiation meetings, the draft chapters of ACTA, and the comments of ACTA participants on the draft chapters?

- Given that the Spanish EU Presidency aspires to an ACTA agreement within the first half of 2010, and given that many Parliamentarians see ACTA as an early example of EP's new role under the Lisbon TFEU, would Commission think that full access to ACTA documents should be given to Parliament prior to the coming into effect of the new Framework Agreement?

Signature(s): Date: 03.02.2010

EN

Let's see if the European Parliament have to go to the ECJ to get the documents, and test the Lisbon Treaty, but there is a high chance that the Commission and the Council will say that the Lisbon Treaty does not apply here, or they won't give full transcripts of the meetings, neither access to the documents.

"For society, however, the loss of competition through the granting sole rights to an individual or organisation is justified only if it stimulates the economy and delivers goods that change people’s lives for the better. […] Instead of stimulating innovation, such [business method] patents seem more about extracting “rents” from innocent bystanders going about their business. […] If truth be told, few inventions are really worth patenting. Time and again, surveys show that in both America and Europe companies rate superior sales and service, lead time and secrecy as far more important than patents when it comes to profiting from innovation. […] Pursuing patents aggressively for cross-licensing agreements has little to do with encouraging innovation, though. Indeed, by increasing transaction costs, such deals are in effect a tax on innovation. By the same token, how much of a contribution have the 12,000 or so business processes patented annually in America (but few places elsewhere) made to innovation? Precious little, by all accounts. It is hard enough to find evidence (outside the pharmaceutical and biotech industries) showing that the patent system generally spurs innovation. It is harder still to find justification for business-process patents."

Source: http://www.economist.com/sciencetechnology/displayStory.cfm?story_id=15479680

"Kappos said that the project “got a good level of interest. It got positive responses from examiners and the public. [The project's participants] found significant prior art, especially in non-patent literature. That's important in software, where so often it's not patented prior art. Our mission as an agency is to get the best prior art in front of examiners. There clearly is value [in the project]." "

Source: http://www.sdtimes.com/link/34113

Jeremy Allison at LCA2010

"One of the worst things that happened out of that, [is that the ISO] which was previously respected by people that didn't know it so well, became absolutely despised," he said. "There are some countries now thinking of pulling out [of ISO] because it is simply not worth participating in a process that is so obviously corrupted."