FICPI demands obligatory unlimited patentability worldwide

[PILCH Hartmut <phm@a2e.de>]

The world alliance of patent lawyer associations

  http://www.ficpi.org/ficpi/newsletters/51/PosPaperSPLT_1.html

demands that Art 27 TRIPs may not and "was never meant to" be interpreted
in a "restrictive" way, i.e. in a way that treats the concepts
"invention", "technical", "industrial" etc as limitations on what can be
patented.  The new Substantive Patent Law Treaty, which is being
prepared by WIPO, should, according to FICPI (and according to the
US delegation at WIPO), impose worldwide patentabilty of anything
useful.  According to FICPI there is "no reason" to limit patentability,
and in particular the ever-growing importance of the service sector should
be taken account of by making patents available for this sector.

It is interesting to see FICPI taking such extreme positions in public.
Normally the tactic has been to continue using "industry" and "technical"
in order to hide the real intentions.   One may wonder why the FICPI
resolution drafters believe that such hiding is less necessary now than
a few years ago.

-- 
Hartmut Pilch, FFII & Eurolinux Alliance              tel. +49-89-12789608
Protecting Innovation against Patent Inflation       http://swpat.ffii.org/
130,000 signatures against software patents      http://www.noepatents.org/