EPO President: Patents Unsuited for Software

[PILCH Hartmut <phm@a2e.de>]

In the mailing list archives

        http://lists.ffii.org/archive/mails/swpat/2002/Dec/
        http://www.aful.org/wws/arc/patents/2002-12/

you can find some interesting news

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2002-12-03: Innovation Scientist: EU should ban software patents

In the german engineer newspaper "VDI-Nachrichten" D Dr. Joachim
Henkel from the Institute for Innovation Research of Ludwig Maximilian
University in Munich writes

  Zu viel Schutz schadet nur
  Wirtschaft: Warum die EU Patente auf Software verbieten sollte

Too much protection is only damaging
Economy: Why the EU should ban software patents

  Ende dieses Jahres entscheidet die EU-Kommission über die
  Patentierbarkeit von Software. Dr. Joachim Henkel vom Institut für
  Innovationsforschung der Uni München plädiert im folgenden Beitrag
  gegen Patente. Sein Urteil: Mehr Schutz ist innovationsfeindlich
  und schadet dem Mittelstand.

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2002-12-04: EPO President: Patents Unsuited for Software

A belgian newspaper article

  Le Soir du mercredi 4 décembre 2002
  http://www.lesoir.be/articles/a%5F033b87.asp
 
  Technologies: Le patron de l'Office européen des brevets s'explique
  « Un brevet logiciel me laisse sceptique »

reports about a legitimacy crisis of the European Patent Office (EPO)
which is confronted with all kinds of accusations, among them the
assertion that it has been granting "ridiculous patents" for software
ideas.  In an interview with the newspaper, EPO president
Dr. iur. Ingo Kober is quoted as saying that he is "sceptical about
patenting of software" and believes that copyright is more
appropriate, and, if idea protection is really needed, a tailor-made
system would be more appropriate than patents:

> L'idée de breveter un logiciel en tant que tel me laisse sceptique,
> affirme pourtant Ingo Kober. Il ne s'agit pas d'une invention par
> définition. Cela conduirait à des situations juridiques intenables. Le
> logiciel est protégé par le droit d'auteur et si ce n'est pas suffisant,
> il n'est pas nécessaire de le rendre brevetable. Une troisième voie qui
> consisterait à autoriser la protection des idées pourrait être
> envisagée.

Already in the past Kober has warned against
"kneejerk reactions" of some industry patent lawyers who were
pressing for deletion of the software patent exclusion from Art 52 EPC:

        http://www.patent.gov.uk/about/ippd/softpat/

On the other hand side, under Kober's presidency, which started in
1995, the EPO has glided toward widening the scope and enforcability
of patents in the area of software.  E.g. in 1998 the legalisation
of program claims was proclaimed to be an official EPO policy by
an apparent presidential remark under two court decisions.  In 2001,
the EPO rushed to revise its examination guidelines so as to 
incorporate this change, although the European Commission was still
undecided and in fact later, in its proposal of February 2002, 
opted against this change.  See

        http://swpat.ffii.org/news/epgl01A/

Yet it is quite plausible that Kober may during all these years have
preserved a skeptical distance to the software patentability agenda.
After all one other well known high-level EPO representative is Gert
Kolle, who has also been a spokesman for a position which is
diametrically opposed to authoritative articles which he wrote a few
years earlier:

        http://swpat.ffii.org/papers/grur-kolle77/

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Bruce Perens is calling free software developpers in Europe to join
the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF).  One immediate purpose of
the membership is to be the assurance of majorities on behalf of a
royalty-free-only standardisation policy, similar to or better than
that of the W3C:

http://www.computerwoche.de/index.cfm?pageid=254&artid=43380

At least in Europe, IETF/ISOC is already a signatory of our

        Call for Action
        http://swpat.ffii.org/papiere/eubsa-swpat0202/appell/index.de.html

That of course could be another reason to join this group, which has
laid much of the foundations of the current Internet.

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At a session earlier this week in the Legal Affairs Committee of the
European Parliament, the rapporteur Arlene McCarthy took a critical
approach to the software patentability directive.  In her report,
she evoked various examples of american and european court verdicts
which warn against allowing an unoverseeable range of human activity
to come under the scope of the patent system by looking at patent
claims in a superficial way and treating anything as "technical"
to which claims can be framed in terms of computer equipment.
McCarthy said that the directive proposal needs to be tightened
up significantly, and that the European Council patent working
party's approach

        http://swpat.ffii.org/papers/eubsa-swpat0202/dkpto0209/

is insufficient.

Her speech was contradicted by the conservative bavarian MEP
Dr. iur. Joachim Würmeling, who defended the practise of the
EPO as being correct and adequate.  Yet, since Mr. Würmeling
has a reputation of being smart and intellectually interested, 
we have reason to hope that his thinking will be at least
as flexible as that of Dr. Kober.

-- 
Hartmut Pilch, FFII e.V. und Eurolinux-Allianz            +49-89-12789608
130000 Stimmen 400 Firmen gegen Logikpatente    http://www.noepatents.org/
Bundesregierung Treiber der Textpatente in EU       http://swpat.ffii.org/