---------- Forwarded message ---------- Date: 2003-11-15 16:51:56 +0000 From: James Heald j.heald@ucl.ac.uk Subject: [Fsfe-uk] FFII-UK update (software patents)

New things on the FFII-UK website:

Summary of the latest situation: http://www.ffii.org.uk/latest.html

Extracts from the US Government FTC report, which is *devastating* about software patents. http://www.ffii.org.uk/ftc/ftc.html

Much expanded commentary on important things in the Parliament amendments which the Commission want to chuck out again: http://www.ffii.org.uk/nov2002.html

Side-by-side comparisons of the Parliament text and the Council draft text: http://www.ffii.org.uk/recitals.html http://www.ffii.org.uk/articles.html

Reminder:

The Coreper decision on how to proceed with the Directive is expected any day now. We really need to get the message over to MPs this weekend, if we are to stop a stitch-up on November 27.

If you have already written to your MP, please write/fax again, thanking them for their previous prompt reply, and updating them about the situation. You may also like to tell them about the FTC report and send them some of the extracts.

If you have not already written to your MP, we really need your help *this weekend*. See: http://www.ffii.org.uk/latest.html http://www.ffii.org.uk/council.html for the latest situation, and general advice on how to be most effective respectively.

As usual, please copy letters sent to uk-parl-sent @ ffii.org.uk and MP replies to uk-parl-replies @ ffii.org.uk It's really helpful if you could put the MP name and consituency in the subject line, eg "Second letter to Sue Doughty MP (Guildford)".

With the first wave of letters, we stopped the Council of Ministers meeting on November 10 from adopting their November 2002 draft unamended.

But unless we can stop it with another, even bigger wave of letters, the Commission and the EU Presidency are pushing for the Ministers to adopt a rushed hack of a text at their next Competitiveness Council meeting on November 23.

Every letter counts. Yours could be the one that tips the scales.

All best,

James Heald, FFII-UK.

[Feel free to forward all or any part of this email to anywhere it could do some good. These four are the only groups it's been sent to, so it's up to you to propagate it from here].

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