[Discussioni] [Patents] EC Press Release Inconsistent with EC/BSA Directive Content

[PILCH Hartmut]

Paris, Munich, 2002-20-02 - The European Commission has just published
a press release on software patents, as well as a directive. Its
content is is, apart from a few minor wording differences, exactly the
same as the BSA document EuroLinux obtained last week. However, the
document of the directive is incomplete. All the arguments which
allows to decide whether this directive is legal or not according to
the Rome Treaty have disappeared. The press release also contains many
sentences which are in contradiction with what is written in the
directive.

A detailed analysis has been published by Eurolinux at

	http://swpat.ffii.org/vreji/papri/eubsa-swpat0202/

where also the original EC/BSA draft itself can be found:

	http://swpat.ffii.org/vreji/papri/eubsa-swpat0202/proposal.pdf
	http://swpat.ffii.org/vreji/papri/eubsa-swpat0202/proposal.doc

In particular, the commission uses a 1998 BSA report to justify the
directive. This BSA report contains no arguments related to patents!
Also, the Commission has neglected official reports in France and
Germany which show the negative impact of patents on innovation and
also show that copyright is the prefered protection of SMEs for the
software economy.

The directive fails to define what is technical. It considers software
to be technical. Therefore, this directive allows to patent anything
innovative implemented with software, including business methods.

In fact, the directive goes even further than that.  It removes the
concept of 'patentable inventions' from the European patent system,
deciding instead that any "computer-implemented" idea per se "belongs
to a field of technology" and is therefore a patentable invention.  It
legalises more than 30000 patents on trivial computing and business
ideas already granted by the EPO under this regime.  The only question
where it deviates from EPO practise is that of the claim form (see our
explanations in the Eurolinux Warning[1]).  However, even here the
directive is worse than we thought: it contains a loophole through
which computer programs can nonetheless be claimed as "computer
program products", and it does not explicitely disallow program
claims.

We urge everyone to read carfully the directive rather than the press
release. The press release contains many sentences which say the exact
opposite of what is actually written in the directive.  This directive
is not a moderate compromise proposal but a rare piece of patent
extremism.

A press release showing how the EC colluded with BSA to produce this
extremist piece is available at

	http://petition.eurolinux.org/pr/pr17.html

A press release showing how software patents are going to be implemented in 
Europe on the MPEG4 standard to everyone pay 0.02 EUR per hour of digital 
video streamed on the Internet is available at

	http://petition.eurolinux.org/pr/pr18.html

EuroLinux Alliance

[1] http://www.eurolinux.org/news/warn01C/