Today, the Legal Affairs Committee of the European Parliament adopted some suggestions on the Gierek's report on Innovation (INI/2006/2274: "Putting knowledge into practice: A broad-based innovation strategy for Europe"), where the majority of the EPP voted for an amendment to promote software patents in standards, tabled by the UK patent attorney and Member of the Parliament Sharon Bowles, which reads as follows:
7a. (new) Calls on the Commission to establish uniform definitions for such terms as 'open standards' and 'fair, reasonable and non-discriminatory licences', and to promote the use of standards in such a way that safeguards a reasonable return on investment for owners of intellectual property, but without creating 'windfall' profits out of intellectual property in standards;
This goes against the recommended definition of the European Interoperability Framework (EIF), which promotes the definition of open standards with royalty-free provisions.
Such RAND definition is promoted by EICTA, as well as the patent attorney of Nokia, which is known to be close from Mrs Bowles.
RAND is of course excluding open source implementations to be distributed freely, and is better renamed by "Non Reasonable and Discriminatory".