EU Council demands software patents

[PILCH Hartmut <phm@a2e.de>]

The EU Council meeting of 2003/03/20-1 has produced a long policy
document

        http://www.consilium.eu.int/Newsroom/LoadDoc.asp?DID=75136&LANG=1

in which under Nr. 37 is written the following demand:

"The European Council calls upon the Commission and Member States to
improve exploitation of intellectual property rights by taking forward
measures against counterfeiting and piracy, which discourages the
development of a market for digital goods and services; to protect patents
on computer-implemented inventions. It expresses its satisfaction at the
common political approach on the Community patent reached in Council
earlier this month and calls on the Council to rapidly finalise work
thereon."

It seems likely that this part of the document was written by the
"Intellectual Property Working Party" which has also produced a document
that asks for program claims and has become the basis for

        - pro-patent lobbying at Europarl
        - pro-patent amendment proposals at Europarl (e.g. Niebler)
        - creation of accomplished facts against law+CEC+Europarl in
          Finnland (and perhaps other patent offices to follow)

Some people in this group are using every opportunity to push for software
patents.  It is however to be asked why the governments are letting this
happen and who is responsible.  Some governments have produced anti-swpat
reports (e.g. Commissariat du Plan, Monopolkommission), and there is in
general no pro-swpat consensus.  We are again witnessing autocratic
activities by a group of well-entrenched patent lawyers who believe that
they are in a position to dictate policies and whose belief until now
seems to be unrefuted.

-- 
Hartmut Pilch, FFII & Eurolinux Alliance              tel. +49-89-12789608
Protecting Innovation against Patent Inflation       http://swpat.ffii.org/
140,000 signatures against software patents      http://www.noepatents.org/