Pro-patent lobby in sticky situation over ice-cream offer

A pro-patent group's plan to attract the attention of European Parliament members with free ice-cream may have landed it in hot water, after a campaign email was sent from an MEP's account without his permission.

On Wednesday last week, every Member of the European Parliament and their assistants received an email from Malcolm Harbour, a Conservative MEP for the West Midlands, inviting them to an event held by pro-patent group Campaign for Creativity (C4C) in Brussels. The email, which was signed by Harbour's assistant, Tori Lapworth, encouraged MEPs to get a free ice-cream and show their support for the proposed software patent directive.

"Dear Members and Assistants, Yes its true! If you go down to Place du Luxembourg from now until 3pm, you can collect your free ice-cream and support the computer implemented inventions [directive] common position! Hope to see you soon," stated the email, which was forwarded to ZDNet UK by two MEPs.

Sources close to the situation told ZDNet UK that Harbour is 'really angry' that the lobbying email was sent from his account. Hugo Shanahan of the C4C was unwilling to comment on Harbour's reaction to the email, but admitted that Harbour was unaware of the email.

"We were working with an assistant from Malcolm's office -- he wasn't in the loop and wasn't aware of the message being sent [from his email account]," said Shanahan.

Harbour was unable to comment in time for this article.

Simon Gentry, the director of the C4C, said the group decided to hold the event to put its point of view across in a less serious manner.

"We knew the Foundation for a Free Information Infrastructure (FFII) were having a meeting and we wanted to make sure the MEPs heard our side of the story as well," said Gentry. "It was just a bit of fun. We were getting people to come and have a chat about what patents are."

He claimed that a "few hundred ice creams" were handed out, but said many of these were probably handed out to passerbys rather than MEPs.

Laurence Vandewalle, an adviser for the European Green Party, said the C4C's latest campaign was weak and unoriginal. She claimed that the Green Party and anti-patent advocates have often done informal campaigns, including offering food at a demo two years ago.

"I have the impression that the C4C campaign has done a deep analysis of everything that the Greens and the open source community have done, and copied them. The difference is that we do it genuinely, while they do it as a professional campaign without really believing in it, without 'faith'. It is just a business for them. Therefore they just stupidly try to copy us and the result is pathetic," said Vandewalle.

The software patent directive is currently being amended by the legal affairs committee (JURI) of the European Parliament (EP). The amendments suggested by JURI will be voted on in a plenary session of the EP in July. For JURI's amendments to be agreed by the EP will require 366 MEPs to vote for the changes — this would represent the majority of the 731 MEPs and is irrespective of absences and abstentions.