"[...]John Collins, a partner at UK firm Marks and Clerk said: 'Torvalds and his supporters lack a fundamental understanding of intellectual property rights as they seem to be unaware that copyright can only protect software code and not software'.
Collins is reacting to recent statements by Torvalds and others in what the law firm describes as 'the latest attempts' to scupper the directive.
He claims that open source developers and the Polish government are misinforming the IT industry and 'serving only to endanger genuine inventions'.
He said: 'Linus Torvalds (creator of Linux) has recently made a statement claiming that the Directive would broaden the area in which patents would be granted. This is simply a false assumption. The original proposal was solely designed to clarify and unify existing practice in the EU. However the current version – as a result of amendments made by the European Parliament – will result in patent holders in certain areas losing a significant element of protection meaning that some existing patents will become worthless.'
The lawyers claim that the directive was originally proposed to provide 'uniformity' in the European Union and to ensure that all member states took the same approach to the patentability of software inventions.
'We should not allow this objective to be undermined,' said Collins. Innovators need to be certain their patents are valid throughout the European Union. [...]"
There is little to add to Mr. Collin's assessment. However, it should be pointed out that the term 'open source developers' might be a bit fuzzy or even inexact within this context - there are also open source developers employed by companies exercising an active patent policy. Moreover, the patentability of computer-implemented inventions is also challenged by representatives of companies not creating open source software but perhaps wanting to have a free ride with regard to valuable inventions of third parties. Maybe that Eurolinux Alliance, FFII e.V., FSF, and Attac are more appropriate keywords when a more precise description of anti-patent campaigners is sought.
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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:
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