Heise Online: Software Patent Controversy Heating Up

-----Original Message-----
From: Jonas Maebe <[email protected]>
Date: Wed, 3 Sep 2003 17:14:38 +0200
Subject: Fwd: Controversy about software patents in EU is heating up

Translation of the Heisse article from another list.

>> Begin forwarded message:

From: Dirk Hillbrecht <[email protected]>
Date: woe sep 3, 2003  16:39:36 Europe/Brussels
To: [email protected]
Subject: Controversy about software patents in EU is heating up

Hello everyone,

I just translated the very well written article of heise online about 
the patent issue into English and pass it hereby over to list. 
Perhaps, it is helpful for someone...

---

Controversy about software patents in EU is heating up

On monday evening, Arlene McCarthy, spokeswoman of the commission 
responsible for the more and more controversial EU directive about 
patentability of computer-based inventions, lost her temper. After the 
voting about the proposal has been delayed into the last parliament's 
session week of September, she complained about the "huge amount of 
desinformation" against the proposal in a statement for her british 
representative fellows. Her most suspicious sources for the 
misinformation seem to be open-source-driven groups and small and mid-
sized companies, who temporarily closed down their web servers last 
week "due to software patents" and demonstrated against the directive 
in Bruxelles.

"This is an in-honest and destructive campaign, which spreads 
confusion about the targets of the parliament", she outraged. The 
unexpected lobbyists and demonstrants would assail the representatives 
with demonstrably false claims and organize phone call campaigns to 
the offices of the members of the parliament. If they succeeded, this 
would be "the deathblow for the cleverst and best European inventors, 
whilst the US and Japan call for license fees from European companies 
for the usage of their patents." The future of the whole European 
economy was at stake.

This dramatically voiced press release, which is not yet released 
officially, is the newest example for the nerves to be all on the edge 
in Bruxelles and Strasbourg. The dispute is now more than one and a 
half years old and it seems as if noone had thought that Open Source 
advocates could become a serious lobbyist party at the European 
stage.  Further support came from small and mid-sized programming 
companies like the Berlin music software specialist Magix and renowned 
European economists, who just declared to have "serious concerns". The 
strong opposition against software patents seems to be simply 
unforseen by the makers of the directive and therefore unplanned.

Currently, the situation is listless. The proponents of the directive 
as McCarthy or commission member for the European Single Market, Frits 
Bolkestein, stress again and again that software "itself" should not 
be patentable. Only in conjunction with hardware and a "technical 
function" this kind of monopol protection should be grantable. The 
opponents like Hartmut Pilch from FFII say this to be a cant and to be 
contradictive to the written content of the directive proposal. In 
their opinion, the paper continues to miss any means against patents 
on simple software logic. Examples are the highly controversial Amazon 
patents which seem to be found worth for a patent by the European 
patent office.

In the final state before the vote several changes have been 
suggested. On the one hand the patent lobby tries to invalidate even 
the currently existing "interoperability clause" 6(a) of the proposal. 
This clause protects conversion programs between different data 
schemes against patent claims. A reformulation of this clause, which 
is also supported by McCarthy, now anullates this exception. On the 
other hand, small parties like the Ecologists [Grüne] and other 
liberal or radical groups have introduced suggestions for changes. 
They demand to change article 2(b) of the proposal in a way, that the 
often cited "technical contribution" of the invention is defined in 
the text. A possible definition could be based on the "connection 
between cause and effect in the usage of controllable natural forces".

It is questionable whether a compromise will be found by the end of 
the month or not. Even parliamentarians from the German Conservatives, 
who followed the directive proposal more or less without a doubt so 
far, do mention the change suggestions now on request. They even 
neglect explicitly software to be a technical part on itself. The 
British ministry of Foreign Affairs, contrariwise, has sent a letter 
to the country's members of the European parliament, which supports 
the McCarthy reasoning. The European Socialists, of which McCarthy is 
a member, plan to search and agree on a common way to continue in this 
week. (Stefan Krempl)
---

Best regards,
Dirk Hillbrecht

-- 
--- Dirk Hillbrecht, Hannover, Deutschland, Germany
----- [email protected] - http://www.hillbrecht.de/


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