[Patents] EuroLinux Warns: Software Patents Still on European Commission Agenda

[PILCH Hartmut phm@a2e.de]

>    Financial Times Deutschland (German) -
>    http://www.ftd.de/tm/te/FTD962824480673.html?nv=hptn

Here is another disinforming article:

        Heise Newsticker
        http://www.heise.de/newsticker/data/odi-06.07.00-000/

Et tu, Heise.

This claims that 
- software patent extension will not go as far as planned,
- not as far as the US and that 
- the inventivity requirements will be high.

Many readers in Germany reported this to FFII as joyful news.  But the
real news hidden in there gives no reason for joy:

(1) the EC intends to "harmonise" (= uniformise) EU patent law on the
    basis of current maximalist patent jurisdiction, which means 
    general patentability of programming logic, as ruled explicitely by the
    German Supreme Court 10 days ago and by the EPO even earlier.  Thereby
    anything that runs through a Turing device is technical, including
    business methods, education methods, musical composition 
    techniques, social techniques etc.

(2) the legislation will go on as planned:  with technicity at the core
    (either explicitely or implicitely allowing programming logic) and
    the "computer program as such" exception or the whole exception list
    removed from the EPC (decision to be taken not by the EC but by the
    ministerial conference, based on a draft from the EPO)

-phm