Malcolm Harbour

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Malcolm Harbour (born February 19, 1947 in Woking, Surrey) is a British politician, and Member of the European Parliament for the West Midlands region for the Conservative Party since 1999. He sits in the centre-right European People's Party group. He is best known for his controversial views on software patents and for having been the European People's Party's shadow rapporteur for the controversial services directive from 2004 to 2006.

He ran first a candidate for Birmingham East in the 1989 European Parliament elections and is married with two children. His interests include travel, cooking, choral singing and motor racing.

He is currently:

the Conservative group Internal Market Spokesman,
member of the Internal Market and Consumer Protection
substitute for the Committee on Industry, Research and Energy
substitute for the Committee on Legal Affairs
as well as a substitute member of the Industry, External Trade, Research and Energy Committee.

Malcolm was formerly a partner in a motor industry consulting company, Harbour Wade Brown from 1989 to 1999, and was UK and Overseas Sales Director for Austin Rover.

On 13 January 2005, Harbour has been appointed by the European Commission to "Cars 21", a new High Level Group to boost competitiveness in the European automobile industry.

The High level Group was set up today by Commission Vice-President Günter Verheugen and the European Automobile Manufacturers Association. See also: Lobbying

Harbour is one of 2 MEPs on this panel, Other members include Government Ministers, European Commissioners and the Heads of Major EU Automotive Firms. The goal of the group is to define the best possible regulatory approaches; and Internal Market Spokesman.

It will be chaired by Günter Verheugen and will focus on the effects of regulation and red tape, and ways of encouraging innovation and technology.

Before joining the Parliament, Harbour spent 30 years in the car industry.

[edit] Views on software patents

Malcolm is best known for his controversial pro-software patent views. He was one of the most outspoken supporters of the EU software patents directive until its ultimate rejection by the European Parliament in July 2005. He has been characterised as a software patent extremist, since he favours permitting Program Claims, a view not shared by most other supporters of software patents.

Within the European Parliament, he is associated with the Campaign for Creativity, a pro-software patent lobbyist group, in part because of unsolicited email sent from his address on behalf of that group.