[FYI] European Parliament hearing on patentability of computer implemented inventions

["Axel H Horns" <horns@ipjur.com>]

http://www.aippi.org/reports/report_eu_nov_02.pdf

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European Parliament hearing on patentability of computer implemented 
inventions 

November 7, 2002 

Report by Stephan Freischem  

[...]  

The second group of speakers representing industrial interest groups 
were strongly controversial in their opinions. The first speaker of 
EICTA, which represents more than 10.000 software companies in 
Europe, with more than 1.500.000 employees and annual revenues of 
over 190 billion Euros, strongly called for harmonisation of the 
patent system. The exclusion of programs for computers as such from 
patent protection in Art. 52 of the EPC and the respective provisions 
of the national patent laws have led an important number of European 
companies to the misunderstanding that any kind of software program 
would be excluded from patent protection. These companies do not 
profit from patent protection. This is a great handicap regarding 
competition, especially with U.S. companies. The directive can now 
provide harmonisation and certainty in applying patent protection to 
software inventions containing a technical contribution. This speaker 
strongly called for the acceptance of claims directed to computer 
program products, as only those claims would provide appropriate 
patent protection against infringement. He did not fear any negative 
effects for small and medium enterprises (SME) and open source 
programmers, pointing out that those enterprises already exist and 
indeed grew considerably under the current patent environment (of the 
EPO) which largely corresponds to the draft directive. SMEs could 
profit from the patent system if the general knowledge of software 
engineers about patent protection could be enhanced. Mr. N'Guyen from 
UNICE expressed a very similar view.  

Whereas most speakers tried to meet their scheduled speaking time, 
the open source representative did not hesitate to triple his 
speaking time. With great enthusiasm and very few objective arguments 
he continued the fight of his interest group against the patent 
system, accused the European patent examiners of illegally granting 
software patents and claimed that he – not EICTA – represents the 
majority of innovative European software enterprises. He accused the 
patent system of generating trivial patents or patenting known 
methods in the field of software. He rejected patent protection for 
any kind of software program as lethal to the economic activities of 
his interest group but left open why open source software remained 
successful and unharmed under the current system applied by the EPO 
as well as, for example, the German and British patent systems, all 
of which largely correspond to the proposed directive.  

[...]  

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