[Ecommerce] New EU Patent Fight Starts Today in Brussels (July 12)

[Seth Johnson]

-------- Original Message --------
Subject: [Patents] New EU patent fight to break out in Brussels
on Wednesday (July 12)
Date: Mon, 10 Jul 2006 15:18:29 +0200
From: Florian Mueller <fmueller.nosoftwarepatents@googlemail.com>
To: <patents@aful.org>

NEW EU PATENT FIGHT TO BREAK OUT
IN BRUSSELS ON WEDNESDAY (JULY 12),
SAYS CAMPAIGNER FLORIAN MUELLER

European Commission hearing on the future of European patent
policy pits the same opposing camps against each other as the
proposed software patent directive that the EP voted down one
year ago

Brussels (July 10, 2006) - Florian Mueller, the founder of the
award-winning NoSoftwarePatents campaign that helped to defeat
the EU software patent directive last year, expects a new fight
over European patent policy to break out on Wednesday. On that
day, the European Commission will hold a public hearing on the
future of the European patent systems in Brussels
(http://ec.europa.eu/internal_market/indprop/patent/hearing_en.htm).
A little over a year after the European Parliament threw out the
"directive on the patentability of computer-implemented
inventions", the same opposing camps are at loggerheads again.

This time around, the European Patent Litigation Agreement
(EPLA), a proposal for an international treaty that would
establish a new European Patent Court, is at the center of the
dispute. In front of approximately 250 politicians, public
servants and journalists, the Foundation for a Free Information
Infrastructure (FFII, http://www.ffii.org) and Mueller will speak
out strongly against the EPLA, while representatives of such
large corporations as Nokia and lobbying organizations close to
Microsoft will demand the EPLA's ratification.

In his blog
(http://www.no-lobbyists-as-such.com/florian-mueller-blog/),
Mueller predicts that EU internal market commissioner Charlie
McCreevy "is determined to back the EPLA"
(http://www.no-lobbyists-as-such.com/florian-mueller-blog/mccreevy-epla/).
According to Mueller, McCreevy was a driving force behind the
software patent directive, and "Microsoft and the other usual
suspects" have already lobbied members of the European Parliament
to support the EPLA.

In his speech at the Wednesday hearing
(http://www.no-lobbyists-as-such.com/florian-mueller-blog/hearing-speech/),
Mueller is going to state that the EPLA "is just another attempt
to give software and business method patents a stronger legal
basis in Europe than they have now. [...] From a software patents
point of view, the EPLA would have far worse consequences than
the rejected patentability directive would have had: not only
would software patents become more enforceable in Europe but also
would patent holders in general be encouraged to litigate."

Mueller also complains about an expected "doubling or tripling of
the total cost of litigation" per patent dispute in Europe.

The legal status of software patents in Europe is contradictory.
While the existing written rules, which go back to the year 1973,
disallow patents on computer programs "as such", the European
Patent Office (EPO) and various national patent offices have
granted tens of thousands of software patents. However, European
patents, even if granted by the EPO, can only be enforced country
by country as of now, and national courts declare many EPO
software patents invalid when their holders try to use them
against alleged infringers. Critics argue that the EPLA would
create a new court system that would be under the control of the
same group of government officials who already govern the EPO,
and that the judges appointed by those people would support the
EPO's granting practice and its broad scope of patentable
subject-matter with respect to software and business methods.

Last week, the European Commission published a preliminary
evaluation
(http://ec.europa.eu/internal_market/indprop/docs/patent/preliminary_finding
s_en.pdf) of the responses it received to a patent policy
questionnaire published in January. The Commission's
questionnaire addressed different policy initiatives, first and
foremost the unitary "Community patent", a patent that would be
valid across the entire EU. But the Commission's preliminary
findings indicate that disagreement over the language regime of
such a Community patent has thus far prevented the EU from moving
forward with the project. The Commission's analysis shows that
industry organizations show a strong preference for the EPLA
instead.

The Commission will listen to approximately 40 speakers at the
hearing on Wednesday, and will formulate a policy recommendation
after the summer. Mueller wrote
(http://www.no-lobbyists-as-such.com/florian-mueller-blog/ecj-epla/)
that one of the next steps will be for the European Commission to
ask the European Court of Justice for an opinion on whether the
ratification of the EPLA requires direct involvement on the part
of the EU or whether any EU member states would be free to
conclude the EPLA on their own. The EPLA's proponents would
prefer to eliminate the need to reach a decision at the EU level,
fearing that the European Parliament might once again wreck their
plans.

CONTACT INFORMATION

Florian Mueller
fmueller.nosoftwarepatents@gmail.com
fixed line +49-8151-21088
mobile phone +49-171-2632226


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