[Patents] Rome treaty - article 100A

[Jean-Paul Smets jp@smets.com]

I just found the following : the directive prepared by the European
Commission with article 100A of the Rome treaty as base.
(read http://europa.eu.int/abc/obj/treaties/en/entr6d05.htm)

This article includes the following paragraph "The Commission, in its
proposals envisaged in paragraph 1 concerning health, safety,
environmental protection and consumer protection, will take as a base a
high level of protection."

There are a few loopholes to be exploited on the legal side.

Safety: because software patents are an incentive not publish the
source code, and because publishing the source code is good for safety
as it has been shown by Y2K, then any harmonization directive should try
to restrict software patents in order to reach a higher level of
protection regarding safety.

Consumer: software patents could be used to create artificial
interoperability issues which could be very damageable to consummers.
Any harmonization directive should try to restrict the use of patents on
software interfaces in order to reach a higher level of protection
regarding consumers.

JPS.
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