Patents: FFII are reporting that ‘the Legal Affairs Committee of the European Parliament (JURI) has decided with a large majority to ask the Commission for a renewed referral of the software patents directive. With only two or three votes against and one abstention, the resolution had overwhelming support from the committee, and all-party backing.’

Michel Rocard MEP gave a very strong speech at the meeting with the Commissioner. Apart from noting several “inelegancies” by the Commission, such as not taking into account any of the Parliament’s substantive amendments in its recommendation to the Council, he also took issue with the Dutch and German governments ignoring their respective parliaments, the Irish Presidency’s sponsorship by Microsoft and the attempted ratifications of the political (dis)agreement at several fishery Council meetings.

He mentioned that at a meeting with the Polish government, the industry players confirmed that the Council text allowed pure software patents, and wondered how the Commission could continue claiming the reverse. He was also curious about how the Commission’s perfectly tautological definition of the concept “technical” could help in any way to distinguish between what is patentable and what is not. Despite his own abstention when voting on the restart later that day, the fact that almost everyone else supported it is probably his personal achievement.

The Commissioner made clear that “any agreement will need to strike a fair balance between different interests”, and that “a constructive dialogue between the Council and Parliament will be vital for an agreement”. He does have the option to deny a new first reading. But given the strength of feeling in the Parliament and the concerns of so many member states in the Council, the Parliament request looks like the best way to achieve a clean way forward for this Directive that everyone has been looking for.

This is good news for the anti-swpat side. Nul points for the Irish Commissioner, Charlie McCreevy, who ‘had in the morning assured the JURI Committee that the Council would finally adopt its beleaguered Common Position text. He announced that “the Luxembourg Presidency has now received written assurances concerning the re-instatement of this issue as an A point at a forthcoming Council”. Given that A points are to be adopted without discussion, this left no possibilities for renewed negotiations in the Council’.

Tags: abstention, agreement, commission, committee, council, everyone, meeting, parliament, patents, software, way

The concept of a ‘pay-to-mail’ scheme — charge people to send you mail — is patented, it seems. Good, I never liked it anyway ;)

A method and apparatus for determining whether a party sending an email communication is on a list of parties authorized by the intended receiving party. If the sending party is not on the list of authorized parties, an electronic billing agreement is emailed to the sending party indicating a fee that will be charged to the sending party in return for the message being provided to the intended receiving party. Preferably, the present invention is implemented with Internet communications and utilizes a security protocol to enable the electronic transaction to be transacted in a secure manner.

Date: Tue, 01 Jul 2003 15:00:09 -0400
From: “Bob Wyman” (spam-protected)
To: (spam-protected)
cc: “‘Yakov Shafranovich”‘ (spam-protected)
Subject: RE: US Spam patents: Partial list

A new, spam-related, US Patent was issued today. It is a continuation in part of US Patent 6,192,114 which is on the first list of patents I posted to this group.

See: http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?patentnumber=6587550

US Patent 6,587,550 METHOD AND APPARATUS FOR ENABLING A FEE TO BE CHARGED TO A PARTY INITIATING AN ELECTRONIC MAIL COMMUNICATION WHEN THE PARTY IS NOT ON AN AUTHORIZATION LIST ASSOCIATED WITH THE PARTY TO WHOM THE COMMUNICATION IS DIRECTED

Abstract A method and apparatus for determining whether a party sending an email communication is on a list of parties authorized by the intended receiving party. If the sending party is not on the list of authorized parties, an electronic billing agreement is emailed to the sending party indicating a fee that will be charged to the sending party in return for the message being provided to the intended receiving party. Preferably, the present invention is implemented with Internet communications and utilizes a security protocol to enable the electronic transaction to be transacted in a secure manner.

————————————————————————

Inventors: Council; Michael O. (186 Hurt Dr., Cordele, GA 31015);
Santos; Daniel J. (3525 Roswell Rd., #721, Atlanta, GA 30305) Appl. No.: 783340 Filed: February 14, 2001

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Asrg mailing list (spam-protected) https://www1.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/asrg

Tags: agreement, apparatus, billing, communication, email, fee, list, method, party, patent

(of the phone variety). I’ve been driven mad by telemarketers; one of the more irritating local innovations (thankfully ’sales cold calls’ are pretty hard to operate with European privacy laws, so it wasn’t a problem back home).

Well, Congress over here recently passed a ‘do not call’ list, so you could ring up the maintainers and ask for your number to be added, and hey presto, no more phone spam. Well, CalPundit writes:

The federal law doesn’t cover banks, airlines or phone companies or calls made within a state.

Wow. That’s like saying ‘the law doesn’t cover calls made on a day ending in ‘y’.’ In my experience, those companies make 95% of the calls. Great.

Think I’ll stick with the tried-and-trusted ‘ring through to answerphone during the afternoon and early evening’ filter…

DMCA: IP: Using treaties to lock in DMCA enforcement:

On May 6, President Bush and Prime Minister Goh of Singapore signed the U.S.-Singapore Free Trade Agreement (the ‘FTA’). President Bush has termed the FTA ‘the first of its kind’ - apparently meaning that it is the first free trade agreement between the United States and an Asian nation.

But the FTA is also the first of its kind in another sense, as well. It is the first international trade agreement to demand that the signatories implement anti-circumvention provisions similar to those of the hotly controversial Digital Millennium Copyright Act (’DMCA’).

It’s Naomi Klein meets Slashdot ;) Hopefully it’ll be blocked though, since it has serious domestic results too:

This step will have international, as well as domestic consequences: If Congress approves the FTA, it will not able to alter the DMCA without violating its obligations to Singapore.

Of course, according to some correspondents, Ireland’s copyright regime (reformed in 2000) quietly inserted its own DMCA provisions. Of course, nobody noticed, except for the legal lobbyists who were hoping this would happen. Doh. Is nowhere safe for freedom-to-tinker these days?

Tags: agreement, congress, copyright, course, dmca, fta, kind, law, phone, trade