[Patents] questionnaire

[PILCH Hartmut phm@a2e.de]

The following questions should be asked in any survey that pretends to be
investigating the opinions of European software companies on swpat.

So far the surveys that were conducted contained only questions that were
geared to patent attorneys, such as how the law could be reworded and how
some conflicts between legal concepts could be solved.

The following is just a first draft.  Proposals are welcome.

http://swpat.ffii.org/stidi/preti/indexen.html
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                               Questionnaires
                                      
      These questionnaires will be used to find out what people in the
          European software industry think about software patents
                                      
How would software patentability affect your company?

    1. Have you ever been approached or attacked by a patent owner for
       infringement of his patents?
    2. How many of the 20000 European software patents could be relevant
       for your field?
    3. How many of these do you own?
    4. How much money do you expect to spend on
         1. patent research
         2. patent applications
         3. patent license fees (subtract the fees you expect to earn
            yourself)
         4. patent infringement lawsuits
       once software patents become enforcable in Europe?
    5. How many patent specialists are working in your company now?
    6. How much could your company gain by being able to fight off
       imitators?
    7. How much could your company lose by having to program around other
       people's patents?
    8. How does the availability of open source software affect your
       company?
          + It takes money out of the software market and threatens our
            revenue stream
          + It enables us to provide better solutions to our customers
          + It provides a good infrastructure for our own software to
            build on
    9. Do you ever disclose source code of your own?
         1. No, we do not write software at all.
         2. No, in general it is our principle to distribute binary files
            only.
         3. Yes, customers can obtain the source code if they sign a
            non-disclosure agreement (NDA).
         4. Yes, we sooner or later release much of our source code to
            the public under an OpenSource license or similar.
   10. How would the enforcability of nx10000 European software patents
       affect your willingness to disclose source code?
         1. to customers
         2. to the public
       
What should be decided in November 2000?

    1. Computer programs should be patentable, and such patents should be
       as fully enforcable in Europe as they are in the United States.
       The European law should be changed according to the Basic Proposal
       of the European Patent Office without further delay.
    2. Whether computer programs should be patentable depends mainly on
       the effects this would have on the European economy and society.
       These effects have not been sufficiently studied. Europe should
       not change the law this year but allow itself a 2 year moratorium
       to further discuss the issue.
    3. Computer programs should not be patentable
         1. Software copyright is quite sufficient to protect the
            legitimate interests of software companies
         2. Copyright alone isn't sufficient either. A third paradigm
            property scheme is needed to better reward innovation
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