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Thursday, December 02, 2004

Some Woes of the Spanish Government.

FFII e.V.

reports that the Spanish Government continues to oppose the EU Council's version of the Draft Directive on patentability of computer-implemented inventions. According to their Wiki, during a plenary session of the Spanish Senate on 1st of December 2004, the Spanish Minister of Industry, Mr. Montilla, has answered a question posed by senator Jordi Guillot on the position of Spanish government on the Draft Directive on computer-implemented inventions:

"[...] the proposal of Directive should have the largest possible social consensus, given its big impact on the IT industry and all other users of IT. Some examples are some regional governments of Spain like Andalucia, Extremadura and Valencia that include open source platforms in their initiatives to promote information society. Moreover, the text debated in the Council does not reflect the general sense derived from the debates in the European Parliament. Also, only a few of the numerous amendments approved by the Parliament, and only those with little modifying effect, have been accepted by the Council. All those were the reasons that led Spanish to vote against the proposal. Delegations of Austria, Belgium and Italy abstained and, since the blocking minority was not reached, the formal common position is due to be adopted by a future Council of Ministers.

However, it is still possible that some delegations change the position that they took in May. This modification should be formally announced in a COREPER. If this would happen, we could reach a blocking minority and therefore the common position would not be reached and the text would go back to the working group. Otherwise, if the text is finally agreed upon, it will be sent to Parliament for a second reading.

In any case, either if the text goes back to the working group or is sent to the Parliament for a second reading, Spain will maintain its position, consisting that the Directive should not have as a result the widening of the matters subject to patentability.

The will of the Government is that those inventions that are not patentable before the approval of the Directive should continue being excluded from protection of the patent legislation after the Directive takes effect.

In summary, Spain will continue defending that patents protect inventions that effectively add a significant contribution to the state of the art, allowing the patent system to fulfil its true function of promoting innovation and technological development apart from being a valuable instrument for sharing technical information."

Uuh ... "The will of the Government is that those inventions that are not patentable before the approval of the Directive should continue being excluded from protection of the patent legislation after the Directive takes effect", said the Minister. Where is the problem? Could please anybody explain to the Spanish Government the gist of the Draft Directive in the Council's version, thereby pointing out why it merely represents a "snapshot" of the recent case law of the Boards of Appeal of the European Patent Office?

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