At the end of next month (July 2007), this blog (and actually the entire site) will go offline.

About eight months ago, I announced that I discontinued my work related to patent policy, but that I would keep this blog online for some more time as an archive of former postings. In the meantime, I became involved with football policy and confirmed that fact in this blog. Other than that, I have not made any new postings.

I am glad to see that there was still a significant number of downloads of my electronic book as well as visits to this blog. However, if a blog ceases to deliver news, it becomes somewhat pointless after a while, and that’s why this site will be taken off the net within a little more than month. There will be no further announcements: at some point around the end of July (or maybe in early August), the site will simply be inaccessible.

There is no particular reason for this decision. The date is related to a hosting agreement which will expire at the end of July and which I do not intend to renew, and I felt that announcing this more than a month before would be a reasonable notice period. When I stepped out of patent policy, it was clear that this site would only be kept online for a limited interim period. I’ve decided to move on to other activities, but that was already the case toward the end of October of last year, so it’s old news.

On this occasion, I’d like to thank all visitors and readers once more for your interest in this topic and my opinions! Best wishes to all of you.

About six months ago, I discontinued my work in the area of patent policy and announced my reasons in this blog article. At the time, I had already mentioned the possibility of becoming involved with football policy. And that has actually happened: From early February on, I have been lobbying and campaigning again, independently but with the official support of Real Madrid, in Brussels and Strasbourg.

In late March, the European Parliament voted on a resolution on “the future of professional football in Europe”, and the European Commission is still working on a comprehensive White Paper on Sports.

My priority has been to defend the important principles of an open market economy with free competition (which is actually stipulated by Article 4 of the Treaty establishing the European Community), and the rule of law, including European Community law, in the sphere of sports. In my opinion, national courts as well as the European Court of Justice have so far taken an attitude toward sports-related cases that works well for clubs, players and fans, and therefore no legislative or regulatory intervention is needed at this stage.

The amendment to the European Parliament’s resolution (or, more precisely, to the EP’s Culture Committee’s proposal) that mattered to me the most was carried by a majority of 315 to 229 votes with 17 abstentions. The amendment had the numbers 9 and 55 (two identical filings, which were voted on together) and deleted a propagandistic passage on the individual sale of football broadcasting rights. When it already seemed very probable that the amendment would go through, British newspaper The Guardian mentioned it in this column (the 2nd paragraph from the bottom, “Real try to protect rights”).

Obviously, football and patents are separate issues, and therefore I do not intend to make more comments on sports policy in this blog. I just wanted to mention here what I am up to because over the months some people have asked me, and recently someone who heard of my connection with Real Madrid from someone in an EU institution called me, so I thought I might as well drop a note here about this. I may at some point start a separate blog on sports and then I would inform all visitors of this blog of where to find the new one.