Stob Strasbourg. Jean-Paul Le Cliché, Euro commissioner for regulation and commerce, has announced - as predicted in The Reg - that the new US extension of patents to integers will be incorporated into EC law.

"This change will come as an element from a greater unit from measurements from reform from patent than we have now at disposal," explained M. Le Cliché in a statement printed in French that we hastily ran through the Babel Fish automatic translator to save the cost of a proper translation.

"While making patent numbers, we also prolong the life of the patents at 999 years, so that the descendants of the inventors can precisely appreciate the advantage of their ingeniousness of ancestors so that aeons them come," he added. The implications of this are obvious and disturbing.

The move to protect patented numbers comes as something of a surprise, as the only company that stands to benefit is the shady software and suing specialist Softwron. Given that this was the case, why was EC copying the US law? This point was put to M. Le Cliché, but he just shrugged his shoulders in that Gallic way. "Parce qu'il est là," said M. Le Cliché.

In other news, M. Le Cliché himself will be personally inconvenienced by a new directive fresh from the French Ministry of Culture. The ministry is notorious for banning the use of English terms imported into le vocabulaire; most recently ruling that "email" be referred to by the clumsy Canadian neologism "courriel".

Now, in a logical extension of its policy of linguistic protectionism, the ministry is demanding that French terms that have been adopted by English speakers are also abandoned.

"It will be inconvenient for a while, but this is the only way to prevent the Anglo-Saxons polluting our beloved inheritance with their big knobbly tongues," said the ministry charmlessly.

So for French people it's no more hors d'oeuvres, no more sang froid and, of course, no more cliché.
It is the life. ®

Previously this week

Softwron number stolen
McDosh hires Titbits