The adoption of the Council's software patent agreement has
been postponed once more.  First, we heard this from various
knowledgable sources, but it has been publically confirmed
by the Council presidency now.

This means that the Parliament will have the chance to restart
the procedure[2].

Even Klaus-Heiner Lehne
MEP (German Christian Democrat), who is presiding over the
decisions in the legal affairs committee (JURI) and has gone to
some lengths to resist the restart while spreading the latest
fallacies of the patent lobby[3], agreed that he would be open
to the restart project if the Council postponed once more.

We will see a lobbying blitz of unprecedented proportions on
the part of the patent industry in the coming weeks and months.

If we can obtain neither a discussion in the Council nor a
restart in the Parliament, we enter a second reading.  In that
case the newly elected Parliament will have only 3-4 months
to react and it will factually need a 60-70% majority against
the Council's proposals.  This would be a highly risky game,
and we would also lose our best chances of melting the ice in
the Council.

Yet even in a 2nd reading we should win.  We are offering
proven solutions, whereas the patent industry is throwing
nothing but money and FUD at the MEPs.

We believe we *will* win this year's battle, if we manage to

(1) raise a fraction of the funds that the patent industry
    is spending, so as to pay for our Brussels office (i.e. a
    5-digit sum).  It was the groundwork of our representatives
    that gained the trust of MEPs in 2003.  Fruitful working
    relationships have been built ever since, but our fulltime
    staff has to live on something, and our coffers are empty.

(2) properly communicate with you.  The webdemo campaign must
    now be regularly renewed, with new model letters, banners and
    and instructions for action. We need to show our friends in
    the Parliament what a large and well-informed community is
    working with us.

For the time being we would like you to

* continue to ask your government to delay (on the basis of
  Art. 3 of the EU Council's Rules of Procedure[5]) any attempts
  to adopt the 18 may text as a common position and to demand
  a recount of votes (B-item).

* stay tuned to http://demo.ffii.org/ and help us us reorient
  and enlarge the webdemo during the next days and weeks.

* find your local MEP[6], read up on the software patent
  dossier, think about how you motivate your MEPs or their
  assistants to communicate with you.

* make a donation[7] for the coming months' Brussels operations.

Yours sincerely,

Hartmut Pilch, Erik Josefsson, Jan Macek,
Bernhard Kaindl, Christian Cornelssen

[1] relegen in http://aktiv.ffii.org/
[2] http://wiki.ffii.org/EuroparlSwpat04En
[3] http://wiki.ffii.org/Juri050119En
[4] http://lists.ffii.org/mailman/listinfo/europarl-parl/
[5] http://ue.eu.int/uedocs/cms_data/docs/2004/6/21/Councils%20rules%20of%20procedure.pdf
[6] You may want to use the "My MEP" tool in http://aktiv.ffii.org/
[7] http://www.ffii.org/assoc/money/account