Digital Rights Network

The FFII conference: Regulating Knowledge: Costs, Risks and Models of Innovation has just concluded. The conference took place in Brussels with the second day being hosted by the Greens in the EU parliament.

Apart from the myriad of interesting speakers and the opportunity to meet with MEPs the event also provided an important opportunity for both sides in the debate to listen to the other, especially with the EIF running a brief evening event after the conclusion of the FFII conference on the second day.

The central issue still revolves around getting an adequate definition of the ever elusive 'technical effect'. The continuing uncertainty is obviously unsatisfactory to all parties given, on the one hand, the reliance upon it by proponents of the Council text and, on the other, the clear deficiencies of its current usage as highlighted by many participants in the conference (it is worth nothing that it was repeatedly used by council-text supporters in the EIF talk - above all by the representative of the EPO).

The EIF talk in the evening on tuesday yielded many interesting comments. Of special note was the lengthy explanation by Henne Schuwer (Deputy Permanent Representative in the Dutch Permanent Representation to the EU) of the translation problems that have delayed the Council draft. In particular he stated not only that it was still not yet ready, but would not be ready until the beginning of December. This means it will not be considered and, potentially, nodded through at the Council meeting on the 25th of November as previously expected.