IHT: "Europe's software patent policy under siege"
The International Herald Tribunereports about the recent status of the proceedings in view of the EU Draft Directive on Patentability of Computer-Implemented Inventions:
Europe's software patent policy under siege
Jennifer L. Schenker/IHT IHT
Wednesday, July 07, 2004
PARIS The adoption of a European Union law on software patents could be in doubt after accusations of missteps and mishaps during a May 18 meeting of the EU Competitiveness Council in Brussels.
Officials in a number of European countries say that votes cast by ministers during the meeting to hammer out political differences did not reflect the position of their governments.
Among the accusations: that the Dutch minister misinformed his national Parliament about the directive’s status; that a stand-in for the Danish minister was coerced into a ‘‘yes’’ vote; that the German minister accepted last-minute changes to amendments made by his own country that were contrary to the wishes of the government; and that the Polish government, which originally abstained, was not asked for its opinion when the final agreement was recorded.
The political storm, which has spread to national parliaments in Germany and Denmark and provoked questions about the EU directive in Poland and Portugal, is the latest twist in a bitter fight between large corporations with significant research investments and scores of patents and small and midsize software companies, academic institutions and supporters of ‘‘open source’’ software, who oppose software patents.
[...]
In what could be an unprecedented move, the Dutch Parliament last week asked to change the ‘‘yes’’ vote that it cast at the May meeting to support making software patentable throughout the European Union. Motions have been introduced in parliaments in other countries, including Germany, to consider a change in their own votes.
The hope of some opponents of patents on software is that this will provoke a new vote by the entire Competitiveness Council — an economics advisory group that is part of the EU Council of Ministers — and reverse the outcome, making software ineligible for patents. The council can make binding decisions, provided it is not blocked by the European Parliament.
'There were a lot of abstentions already, so we think if we can show that Holland has changed its vote, it might have a domino effect,’ said Arda Gerkens, a representative of the Socialist Party in the Dutch Parliament who helped spearhead the move to have the Netherlands change its vote. [...]"
The Legal Observatory of the European Parliament as of today still indicates as recent status of that matter "Awaiting Council common position". A political thriller, indeed ...
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Dipl.-Phys. Axel H Horns is Patentanwalt (German Patent Attorney),
European Patent Attorney as well as European Trade Mark Attorney. In particular, he is Member of:
International Herald Tribune 
