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European Parliament hearing on patentability of computer implemented inventions

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


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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