[Gllug] EU Software Patent Legislation

[Chris Bell]

Hello,
   I passed the information about EU Software Patent Legislation to London area MEPs, and this is from the only reply so far:

Date: Fri, 14 May 2004 11:24:13 +0200
From: Jean   Lambert <JeLambert at europarl.eu.int>
Subject: Re: EU Software Patent Legislation (urgent)
To: chrisbell at overview.demon.co.uk

** Proprietary **

Dear Mr. Bell,

Thank you for the article that you have sent me on the patentability of software. In September 2003 the European Parliament voted on the first reading of the software patents proposal. As you know it had been the intention of the European Commission and numerous European governments to adopt a system that is similar to the American one. 

I am well aware of your concerns with the directive. Software patents favour huge companies that can afford a well resourced legal department, this inevitably harms small and medium-sized enterprises which create most of the innovation in the IT field. Patents are expensive, create much administrative work, and are granted slowly and for a long time period, while the life cycle of software is short. Moreover, patents kill free and open source software that is not only crucial for the EU's software production but also good for the consumer. 

The Green Group in the European Parliament was very active on this topic, leading resistance to the Directive (see our website http://www.greens-efa.org and click on "software patents"). Organising conferences with leading patent experts, economists and computer programmers. 

Ahead of the vote in parliament we successfully managed to persuade enough MEPs to substantially modify the text of the Commission proposal in the following ways: 

· to exclude software from patentability (but only in one part of the proposal); 
· to prohibit the patenting of intellectual methods (software, teaching methods, business methods etc); and
· to allow reverse engineering and interoperability. 

Nevertheless, the draft Directive remained ambiguous and contradictory (articles 2 & 4 contradict each other, with the preamble contradicting the legal articles). Even with our ammendments I believed it would open the gate for software patents in the European Union. It is for this reason that, after voting in favour of the amendments mentioned above, which helped to avoid the worst case scenario, I voted against the adoption of this Directive in the Parliament. 
This month the Irish Presidency of the EU referred back the controversial Directive on software patents to a committee of politicians from member states. The counter proposal you refer to rejects all amendments made by the European Parliament last September and instead pushes for direct patentability of computer programs. 
The Greens organised a day of action on the 15th of April to highlight the worries of the open source software community ahead of the decision by National Governments. This was a show of strength for the opposition from both the Greens, European GNU/Linux Users Groups and associations for the promotion of free software. The software patents directive, is on the agenda of the Council Competitiveness on 17/18 May, and unfortunately it is a A-item. This means that this point will be adopted without debate unless a national government opposes it. The issue is now in the hands of National governments and I suggest with all urgency that you contact the UK government, specifically the DTI, and express your concerns. 
At this stage the Green/Efa MEPs can only deplore the situation with the Council which is not taking the opinion of the Parliament into account, despite the fact that this is a codecision (shared-responsibility) procedure. The Parliament will meet again next autumn for the second reading of the directive where the Greens will push for the Parliament to keep a clear position against software patents - or we will vote against the directive. If you would like some more information, don't hesitate to contact me or the Green advisor dealing with this : Lvandewalle at europarl.eu.int. I can assure you that I have done all possible to avoid this directive and defend the highly innovative European software sector. It is now in the hands of National governments, hopefully they will make the right choice.
Yours sincerely,


Jean Lambert

Office of Jean Lambert
Green MEP for London
European Parliament 8G107
Rue Wiertz 60
B-1047 Brussels
Tel  +32 2 284 7507
Fax + 32 2 284 9507
Email: jelambert at europar.eu.int
Webaddress: www.jeanlambertmep.org.uk







-- 
Chris Bell

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