[Patents] European Union plans to adopt US kind "liberal practice" on software Patents

[Jean-Paul Smets jp@smets.com]

http://europa.eu.int/comm/internal_market/en/speeches/spch101.htm

The Software Directive announced for Summer of this year will be a further
building block of the legislative framework. The Directive should put an end 
to
a situation where computer programs "as such" are legally excluded from
patentability but thousands of patents for  technical inventions using a
computer program have been granted by the patent offices. In addition, the
jurisprudence of the European Patent Office and the Member States is not
uniform. To remedy this situation, the Directive shall make the current legal
framework more transparent and create legal certainty. Thus, it should provide
incentives for increased investment in the development of software and make a
major contribution to innovation in the software field. In fact, patents 
should
stimulate innovation by providing inventors with a means to recoup investments
on the basis of the grant of a temporary monopoly on the commercialisation of
the patented products and processes. To compensate for the grant of the
monopoly, the invention is disclosed to the public. Innovative industry should
be able to build upon the disclosed knowledge. My services are currently
exploring if the Directive should be confined to a harmonisation of the status
quo as defined by the jurisprudence or if it should go beyond the status quo 
and
into the direction of the more liberal practice in the US. 

In making this determination, the Commission will have to take into account 
the
competitive situation of the European software industry in relation to its 
major
trading partners. The gap in protection levels between Europe and its main
trading partners could be further reinforced because distribution of computer
programs on a world-wide scale via the Internet is steadily increasing.
Independent of the scope of the Directive, the quality of software patents is 
of
paramount importance because only meritorious software patents will further
innovation, competition and e-commerce