Repeat ... until 1+1 != 2

The so called "Campaign for Creativity", a lobbying outfit funded by Nokia and others, found yet another lobbying hat to spill their propaganda. CLEPA: CII Directive an important legislative process in safeguarding innovation in Europe . CLEPA is a lobbying organisation for the automotive industry. Again same old stories. CLEPA wants MEPs to embrace the Council´s version (!!), after the Council rejected all of the substancial amendments of MEPs, wrote an independend radical Council proposal about which Commissioner McCreevy said that it only had been adopted(?) for procedural reasons. So regardless on which side of the debate you are: the writer of the letter is uninitiated or naive regarding the situation in Parliament. The letter just repeats general arguments and known untruth but is unable to provide any substancial evidence. It is really said to see their lobbyism in such a poor fashion. Even basic patent trivia such as

Patents stimulate technology transfer and knowledge-sharing between companies and accelerate innovation, because patent applications are published

is quoted. So what? Of course such an argument cannot justify a normative decision about the scope of patent law, everybody knows this. Members of European Parliament are not that stupid! Lobbyists who mix up positive explanative legal teachings and normative lawmaking cannot be taken serious. The current stage of lobbyism closes all doors for substancial negotiations. Another example?

If it is no longer worthwhile to run Research and Development in Europe, because the results can no longer be protected, new employment for researchers and developers would be created in other parts of the world.

Everybody knows that patent law is national product market centric. So German patents are for the German market only ecc. Where in the world you developed your technology is baseless. If you want to sell in New Zealand and needed patent protection you have to obtain NZ patents-. However wrote that phrase above was clueless about patent law or underestimated the intellectual level of MEPs.

The burden of proof lies upon the proponents to explain us why patent law in that specific market suits us better than industrial copyright. And I am really curious about substancial arguments! Instead of providing substancial evidence they repeat untruth about the Directive proposal in which no one believes anymore and they repeat superficial general arguments (I am sure real argument can be found!). They react as I learned abroad: a prostitute from Ghana repeated her phrase "Buy me a malt (beer)!" 30 times, a salesmen from Egypt repeated his four standard phrases "Just small business. Cause in the morning....". Obviously this always happens when they fail with their tactics, people still do listen to them and try to stay polite. The economic majority meanwhile decided in favour of copyright, not patents. Repeat ... until 1+1 != 2. On "my" India Discussions list Hartmut Pilch put one issue straight to the point (email to Ramanraj K):

The problem is that while copyright is a precision tool, patent law is a sledgehammer. From the perspective of patent law, objects that you wouldotherwise think of as different programs become the same program. The object under the sledgehammer is the same as the object under theprecision tool. The difference is in the legal instrument, not in the object that it is directed to.

I recommend CLEPA to check the facts first before they undermine their credibility with lobbying advice from C4C/P4I/EICTA. Members of CLEPA shall better be concerned to get hit by those "sledgehammers".