European (Patent) Democracy Day?

In case you missed it, the Foundation for a Free Information Infrastructure, or FFII, celebrated Friday, September 24, as "the first anniversary of the plenary vote by the European Parliament that stopped the EU Commission's push towards unlimited patentability."

Fédération Internationale des Conseils en Propriété Industrielle (FICPI), or FICPI, which bills itself as a "non-political, world-wide organisation of intellectual property attorneys in private practice" probably has different view of the new "E-D Day." The published a "Position Paper on the European Union Parliament's Decision on 24 September 2003 on the Proposed Directive on the Patentability of Computer-Implemented Inventions" which concluded that that

The amendments adopted by the European Parliament were apparently formulated by and serve only the purposes of the radical anti-patent activists. The provisions contained in the amendments are incompatible with existing patent laws and its definitions of fundamental terms such as invention or inventive step. If it were to come into force, the consequences of the Parliament text would effect not only the field of computer implemented inventions but the patent system as a whole and create instead of reduce substantial legal uncertainty as well as conflicting interpretations of the law within the European Union member states. In addition, many provisions violate the TRIPS obligations and would create an unbridgeable gap between European patent law on the one side and international patent law of non-European countries on the other side. FICPI therefore strongly opposes the text adopted by the Parliament.