descr: In 2003 on May 7-8 the Greens/EFA and FFII/Eurolinux organised a public conference about the Software Patentability Directive Proposal for whose adoption by the European Parliament MEP Arlene McCarthy as a rapporteur has been pushing. The conference was convened on short notice but yet succeded in attracting more than 200 attendants, among which were many software developpers and business leaders. The Greens hat announced the conference through various channels, including posters in the European Parliament, since early April. FFII sent out some late mailings to MEPs with a detailed conference program. One of the recipients, MEP Arlene McCarthy, immediately complained about this mailing and said to journalists that Eurolinux was trying to exclude her, the rapporteur, from the discussion. She repeated this complaint at various occasions in and outside the parliament. We use this webspace to distribute McCarthy's messages to our participants and to document her complaints. title: 2003/05/07-8 BXL Swpat Conference: MEP Arlene McCarthy's Message rWW: XDrudis 2003/05/20: Meller's Article on Greens/EFA Conference dxa: Xavier Drudis Ferran points out a large number of errors and lack of objectivity in Paul Meller's article about the Greens/EFA Conference on SMEs and Software Patents of 2003/05/08 eas: German version of IDG report by Paul Meller, further simplified, says that %(q:300 software developpers) followed the invitation of %(q:a group of software lobbyists) to discuss with MEPs %(q:about the disadvantages of software patents) but failed to invite the most important player, Arlene McCarthy, and may pay dearly for this failure; cites McCarthy as accusing the %(q:lobbyists) of unfair discussion practises and warning them that their %(q:too harsh demands) would meet firm resistance. WrW: McCarthy 2003/05/03: Software Patent Directive Proposal FAQ Wlr: The original text as distributed by MEP Arlene McCarthy, converted from MSWord to PDF. urc: our criticism cas: Dr. Karl-Friedrich Lenz, professor of European Law, cites and refutes some paragraphs from the note which Arlene McCarthy sent to our conference. sot: Mailing list discussion of Paul Meller's article about the Greens/EFA conference on software patents and SMEs mWc: Having read about McCarthy's complaints to the press and to JURI about unfair treatment by FFII, Hartmut Pilch publishes a letter exchange which Arlene McCarthy and other evidence which puts McCarthy's complaints in context. lvG: similar as above but in German WMn: Professor Lenz finds that MEP McCarthy has no reason to complain. tWM: Letter to MEPs upd: This letter was sent out on 48 hours before the beginning of the conference. It was preceded by letters and a poster campaign from Greens/EFA 3 weeks earlier, which also notified MEPs but did not contain the fully elaborated program. 0ua: In a JURI session on monday May 11, McCarthy was absent and in her place her party colleague MEP Michael Cashman explained that she was ill and that she had been unfairly treated by Eurolinux, which had conducted a closed discussion, designed to exclude her. # Local Variables: ; # coding: utf-8 ; # srcfile: /ul/prg/src/mlht/app/swpat/swpatpenmi.el ; # mailto: mlhtimport@a2e.de ; # passwd: XXXX ; # feature: swpatdir ; # dok: swpparl035amccarthy ; # txtlang: en ; # End: ;