And who is to be fooled by the reference to Paul David as an advisor to European Union policy-makers (which he is not individually) and a member of the Knowledge for Growth (K4G) group and the omission of that reference for both Reinhilde Veugelers and Luc Soete? For the list of K4G members, see http://ec.europa.eu/invest-in-research/pdf/download_en/list_of_members.pdf; and, by the way, the K4G is an advisory body to Commissioner Potočnik and not the entire European Commission as stated in the “report”. The omission my have been deliberate or accidental, but neither hypothesis is charitable.

And why was the “story” of David given such prominence over the points from three other speakers (plus others who went unreported)? We surely won’t venture that it is because the “story” was the most ludicrous. For, for instance, anyone who has completed reading of Chapter One of “Patents for Dummies” knows that it is a primary function of patents to promote – not inhibit – knowledge diffusion. Or anyone who has some understanding of society and economics knows that it is not countries, but economic actors, who litigate over patents.

So is it because it makes a catchy headline or because it fits a cause surreptitiously propagated?

This is a question that warrants serious consideration. Previous pieces from Brussels indeed went along the same lines. Consider for instance “EU Stakeholders Debate Copyright, Access And Artists In Digital Age” of 24 April 2009: this time, the headline was fairly banal, although overstretched for an event organised within the framework of European Year of Creativity and Innovation 2009, with a fairly small attendance and without any Commissioner. The piece started with “Copyright should be abolished because it undermines cultural diversity, a Brussels conference has been told”.

This raises two questions. Firstly, as stated in the piece, the above quotation was (correctly) summarising Dutch academic Joost Smiers, co-author of the book Imagine! No Copyright. Any one interested in his thesis and in its links with the real world, and hence the merits of the thesis, should look up a two and a half page summary of the book at http://www.recursosculturales.com.ar/documentos/publicaciones/Imagine.doc.

Secondly, the above quotation appears in the report as the key lesson to be drawn from the event. Any one interested in what really happened in that meeting, and hence in the truthfulness of the report, should go to http://www.goethe.de/ins/be/bru/pro/download/Conference_Report%20EN.pdf.

The incontrovertible conclusion is that the reporting style and content is surely fine for a tabloid, not for a medium that endeavours to abide by the highest standards of journalism and influences the agendas of debates on intellectual property.