[Ecommerce] EU: Software patent directive removed from agenda for now

[Manon Ress]

Thanks to FFII for latest news:

FYI: Software Patents: No decision this year

Tuesday 21 December -- FFII welcomes the decision of Poland to remove
the A-item adopting the Directive' COM 2002/0047 (COD) "On the
Patentability of Computer-Implemented Inventions" (Software Patent
Directive) from the agenda of todays meeting.

The fact that the unilateral declarations of concerns by member states
contained more text than the actual directive itself, only accentuated
the proposed text's woeful lack of support and lack of democratic
legitimacy.

National governments were mislead into believing they were getting a
Directive which allowed patents only for computer-controlled technical
devices. Instead, most patent professionals believe the proposed text
would have forced Member States to uphold the furthest reaches of
current EPO practice -- so that, in the words of patent attorney Simon
Davies, "all inventions that might reasonably be considered as within
the realm of computer science, for example
procedures at the operating system level to improve machine operation,
or generic algorithms, techniques and functionality at the application
level" [1] would be patentable.

Even the UK Government, one of the strongest supporters of the proposed
text admitted that "Clarity will only come from the first test case in a
European court [2].

FFII hopes that, inspired by today's developments, the Council of
Ministers will now go back and thoroughly revise the text, to make it
quite clear what they do and what they do not want to see patented.
This should be clearly written into the legislation, not left for the
courts to decide.

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FURTHER INFORMATION:

[1] Journal of Information Law and Technology, July 2003
     http://elj.warwick.ac.uk/jilt/03-1/davies.htm

[2] The Register, 14 December
     2004 http://www.theregister.co.uk/2004/12/14/patent_directive/


For more information about the dangers of software patents, see the
comprehensive website at http://www.NoSoftwarePatents.com/

and the two 1-page briefings attached:

     *  Software patent directive - the dangers
     *  Seven myths about the software patents directive



For further information, please contact:

James Heald, FFII (UK)
     Chilworth Manor, Chilworth, Guildford GU4 8NL.
     (+44) 07854 460 220 / 07789 107 539

     j.heald@ffii.org.uk






=========================================================================
FFII-UK (http://www.ffii.org.uk/) is the UK volunteer group of the
Foundation for a Free Information Infrastructure (FFII), a Europe-wide
non-profit association registered in Munich.

FFII campaigns to promote competition and innovation in the field of
software development. We seek a positive environment for the development
of information goods, based on copyright, free competition, and open
standards.

More than 700 companies and 50,000 registered supporters have entrusted
the FFII to act as their public voice in the area of exclusion rights
(intellectual property) in data processing; and the FFII/Eurolinux
petition against software patents now has over 300,000 signatories.
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ENDS.


--
Manon Anne Ress
manon.ress@cptech.org,
www.cptech.org

Consumer Project on Technology in Washington, DC
PO Box 19367, Washington, DC 20036, USA
Tel.:  1.202.387.8030, fax: 1.202.234.5176

Consumer Project on Technology in Geneva
1 Route des  Morillons, CP 2100, 1211 Geneva 2, Switzerland
Tel: +41 22 791 6727