Document presentations from Interoperability - ITAPA2006

We finaly manage our english presentations to be accessible world-wide. Serge Novaretti, European Commission; Wouter Tebbens, SelfProject; Erwin Tenhumberg, Sun Microsystems.

Patents out, business conflicts still criminalised - IPRED2

Brussels, 28 November 2006 -- In today's vote on the "IPR Enforcement
Directive" (IPRED2, 2005/0127 (COD)), the European Parliament's Industry
Committee (ITRE) limited the directive's scope to copyright piracy and
trademark counterfeiting. The rapporteur, David Hammerstein MEP
(Greens/EFA), received backing from all groups for his amendments.

The FFII welcomes the reduced scope and other improvements, but notes
that business conflicts are still criminalised in some cases. These
issues would have been addressed by rejected amendments from MEPs
Dorette Corbey (PSE), Umberto Guidoni (GUE/NGL), Edith Mastenbroek (PSE)
and Patrizia Toia (ALDE).

Other significant amendments however mean that:

* The state cannot unilaterally start an infringement investigation. The
police cannot know about private licensing arrangements and even if
licenses are public, government bodies are sometimes confused by
unfamiliar concepts. In February 2006, a UK Trading Standards officer
wanted to prosecute a business for selling CDs of the free Firefox
browser. Further, rights holders may choose to not enforce their own
rights.

* Rights holders may not participate in criminal investigations. The Max
Planck Institute for Intellectual Property, Competition and Tax Law
noted that this provision was fundamentally incompatible with a
democratic society.

The amended directive still allows some regular business conflicts to
fall under criminal law. The directive defines "counterfeiting" to
include regular trademark/tradename conflicts between companies.
Copyright piracy remains undefined. The current text therefore still
does not comply with established fundamental principles of criminal law,
which requires precise and explicit descriptions for all individual
criminal offenses.

FFII analysts also note that this is the first directive that gives the
European Community power to define criminal law which is unrelated to
trade barriers in the Internal Market. FFII president Pieter Hintjens
says "There has been very little support for this directive except from
the Commission, and we believe its real goal is to set a precedent
rather than catching pirates."

more at press.ffii.org

CPU patent threat

How some people doesn't seem to see the current patent system as a threat to a healthy society and business methods is really impossible for me to believe. Check american newspapers, almost everyday you can see a patent claim sueing over really ridiculous technologies which one will find normal to use. Another case which caim to my audience this week is Intel claiming patents around making CPUs. Isn't it a good example as patent can be abused to destroy competition and overthrow the market? It isn't only in information technologies (such as software patents), but also in medical and drug research, even diseases. Can we patent a disease and make somebody pay for getting it?
With IPRED intel can not only sue competition, they can freeze their bank accounts or even shutdown a whole branch. Isn't it obvious what is going on?


- source Inquirer-

Photo story from ITAPA - eGovernment

Short photo story from the ITAPA 2006 - eGovernment conference which has been held in Bratislava. Itapa is international conference focusing at eGovernment. These photos were taken in three corners of the ITAPA (Interoperability panel, FLOSS terminal corner and Open Technology stand supported by SKOSI, ngo and Sun Microsystems Slovakia).
gallery

Open technology and Interoperability event

INVITATION TO ITAPA 2006 CONFERENCE

To be held on 14 – 15 November 2006 in Crowne Plaza Hotel in Bratislava, Slovak Republic.

The organisers of ITAPA 2006 in cooperation with SKOSI, non-profit organisation and Sun Microsystems have the pleasure to invite you to ITAPA 2006, a conference offering the general public several opportunities to learn about open technologies and eGovernment interoperability.

The conference will house the Interoperability panel, provided with in cooperation with the European Commission – eGovernment services, Sun Microsystems and the Ministry of Transport, Posts and Telecommunications of the Slovak Republic – eGovernment Department. All speeches will be simultaneously translated into English and Slovak. The panel will start on 14 November, 2006 at 04:00 p.m. in Section C2. Any changes of agenda reserved, please see http://www.itapa.eu.

Topic: Interoperability, the very essence of eGovernment

Speaker: Serge Novaretti, IDABC - eGovernment, European Commission

Tpoic: OpenDocument based Data freedom

Speaker: Wouter Tebbens, SELF project, supported by the European Commission, The Netherlands

Topic: OpenDocument based Data freedom

Speaker: Erwin Tenhumberg, Sun Microsystems, Open Source Group, Germany

Topic: Interoperability in Slovakia

Speaker: Ján Hochmann, Ministry of Transport, Posts and Telecommunications of the Slovak Republic

A further opportunity to learn about open technologies is to use free terminals with Internet access. Visitors will have the opportunity to discover the Slovak version of the GNU/Linux operating system running on Sun's Sun Ray thin clients and Sun ULTRA workstations.

In addition, there will be an open technologies stand where ICT experts will provide information on open technologies, and hand out miscellaneous materials and free CD's, which will enable to the visitors to take home a piece of freedom.

ITAPA is accessible to the general public, no admission required (exclusive of conference print materials, refreshment, etc.).

Tripping the ODF

Trans-European meeting of the working group ODF Alliance for support and implementation of Open Document Format took place this week in Brussels. Reports from different countries calls for help in various battlefields, starting with the open standards government issues for support the legislation and decision makers.

ODF is here, it's an ISO standard, it's supported in many applications. Publishing in ODF is the way of freedom. Freedom to choose application with what you want to view or edit it. Many European countries shares the vision of Interoperability, the doors are right here but the strong opposition is showing other doors, other steps. If we want to succeed in Interoperability we should support the publishing of ODF by our government. As they are doing in Belgium, ODF is going to be the main office document format for exchanging documents. The start is a bit slower, the reading part of the ODF should be possible by september of 2007 in all governmental organizations. By the same date in 2008 they should be able to edit it as well.

Further we go, the more we need. To help ODF movement we should try to help it in general, what about a ODF online validation check? Same as W3C consortium is doing the validation of html, css and other web standards. We should be able to check the real validity of the published ODF when somebody claims he have a open standard by ODF definition which is around 700 pages.

Isn't it all about knowing that after I die, my children can access my data I saved in ODF?

Spreading awareness

Creating awareness within the European community among SMEs and the FLOSS

community about the resolution of patent issues is now the most
important task we have. Without support there is no resolution, and

without resolution there is a huge threat coming upon us.

Many people do not seem to understand the issues; they say "Software
patents are over". They are not, we only stopped computer implemented
inventions last year, but that doesn't mean we have won.
There are still many ways to implement software patents in
legislation - such as EPLA or the community patent which will come into effect

next year. And still, there are other directives trying to harm us as

well. What is the worst, that some of the decision-makers in the
Commission and the
Parliament are pro-patent, which means they believe such
legislation should exist. This is where we must approach them and

change it. The matter of Open market, competition and interoperability

are at stake. It isn't only about Free Software, it's about affecting
the European market, the place where we as consumers and producers will be
harmed the most.

Addressing issues

IPRED2 - IPR Enforcement Directive

Vote in the middle of December, today (17.10.2006) we successfully tabled amendments with liberal party for the ITRE committee.

IPRED2, will reshape the look on patent legislation within judgment where as abusing the patents will be prosecuted as criminal action. Basically, abusing patents can put us in jail.

Our goal is to amend the directive in it's developing process inside European Parliament to more secure directive or reject it as whole.

EPLA - European Patent Litigation Agreement

Reformation risk of Patent procedures:

• Situation endangerment for SMEs in all member countries

• Negative impact for initiatives of European Commission for open technologies in public sector of member states

• complicated situation of international corporation focusing on ICT sector

• restraint of any software development without proper patents

• current reading will allow creation of complicated patents, which means for one process there can be several patents

• biggest problem will be cross patenting, whereas many inventions share the same principles, e.g. almost every graphical application is using double click

Impact

Upcoming directives will make:

• putting patents on the edge of European Community democratic control (Parliament, Commission, Council, and so on)

• ignoring already rejected directives from European Parliament about patents

• Criminal sanctions for abusing of patents

Tabling IPRED amendments for ITRE

Today was deadline of amendments for ITRE (Industry, Technology, Research and Energy) committee in European Parliament. We managed to get tabled all of our amendments by Liberal party, also the one's aim for rejection of IPRED2. Woohooo!

Protecting innovation

Hopefully another successful day, I started a project within Slovakia and Czech Republic “ Protecting Innovation ” which aims solving the upcoming directives in European Parliament such as IPRED ( Intellectual Property Rights Enforcement Directive ) and EPLA ( European Patent Litigation Agreement). Working on solution together with FFII.org guys in Brussels.

Problem of IPRED is criminalization of patent usage, which basically means you can go to jail if you use other patents then you own.

EPLA, is another thing, reform of European Patent Office and putting the patent process out of European Community and out of democratic hands.

Awareness

Today I finally decided to map some of my activities also in English language. I did this mainly because I believe these activities should be represented worldwide. Until now, my informational focus was Czech Republic, Slovakia and a bit Poland.

Activities; Open Source related projects such as managing, creating and helping project communities, developing projects in e-Government, school sector, private and citizens. Many of such activities involve consultations and lobbying in European Community (Parliament, Commission, Council, Regional Offices, Self-Governments and so on), protecting software development on pan European level.

I'm full time activist and currently I'm focused at IPRED (Intellectual Property Rights Enforcement Directive), OpenAkadémia project for developing teaching architecture of FLOSS in Slovakia which both needs to be solved by the end of this year.