Ingo Kober and Software Patents

born 1942 in Liegniz (Legnica), Silesia. Federal German Ministry of Justice (BMJ): 1975 to 1995, President of the European Patent Office (EPO) since 1996-01-01, After completing his legal studies, Ingo Kober began his professional career in 1972 as judge and public prosecutor in Mannheim and Tauberbischofsheim. In 1975 he moved to the BMJ, where he served until 1982. He then worked for a short time as chief legal policy adviser before returning to the BMJ in November 1982 as head of its "Cabinet and Parliamentary Affairs" department. Subsequently he took charge of personnel and organisation (1985), then of overall administration at the BMJ (1986). In January 1991 Kober was appointed state secretary at the BMJ, a position he held until taking over as President of the EPO in January 1996. He was elected to the EPO presidency in December 1994 by the member states which make up the European Patent Organisation's Administrative Council - on which he served as head of the German delegation from 1987 to 1991.

European Patent Office: High Above Legality: The European Patent Office finances itself by fees from the patents which it grants. It is free to use a certain percentage of these fees. Since the 1980s the EPO has illegally lowered the standards of technicity, novelty, non-obviousness and industrial applicability and abolished examination quality safeguards so as to increase the number of granted patents by more than 10% and the license tax on the industry by 26% per year. As an international organisation, the EPO is not subject to criminal law or taxation. The local police's power ends at the gates of the EPO. High EPO officials have inflicted corporal injury on their employees and then escaped legal consequences by their right to immunity. The work climate within the EPO is very bad, leading to several suicides per year. The quality of examination reached a relative high in the 80s but has after that been deteriorating, partly because the EPO had to hire too many people too quickly for too low wages. Examiners who reject patents load more work on themselves without getting more pay. Examiners are treated by the EPO management as a kind of obstacle to the corporate goal of earning even more patent revenues. The high-level employees of the EPO owe their jobs to political pressures from within national patent administrations and do not understand the daily work of the office. The EPO has its own jurisdictional arm, consisting of people whose career is controlled by the EPO's managment, which again is strongly influenced by industry patent lawyers (on the Standing Advisory Committee (SACEPO)) and by the Office's internal climate. The national organs that are supposed to supervise the EPO are all part of the same closed circle, thus guaranteeing the EPO managment enjoys feudal powers beyond constitutional legality, and that whatever they decide is propagated to the national administrations and lawcourts.
Die Rolle des Europäischen Patentamts im Spannungsfeld globaler Wirtschaftsentwicklungen --- Bestandsaufnahme, Herausforderung und Ausblick: Dr. h.c. Ingo Kober, president of the European Patent Office (EPO), explains how much the european patent system has already achieved, how important it has become for the knowledge economy and that, as far as software and business methods are concerned, the EPO enjoys the full support of the national governments. Yes, the governments did not fulfill the EPO's wish to remove the computer program and business method exclusions in Art 52 EPC at the Diplomatic Conference of November 2000. But that does not prevent the EPO from continuing, as its president explains, to grant patents on computer programs and computer-implemented business methods (sic!), nor does it imply any criticism of this EPO practise.
One Europe, One Currency, One Patent, reliable protection for modern technologies: This foreword of the Annual Report of the European Patent Office (EPO) of 1997, written by EPO president Kober, sounds rather euphoric. Beside engaging in uniformisation hype and celebrating the European Commission's Green Paper on the Community Patent, it also says, using political codewords related to the software patentability legislation piggybacked onto this project, that "european patents must provide reliable protection for new technologies". This is another document of the political guidance which instigated EPO judges to allow patent claims on "computer program products" in two landmark decisions of 1998, in evident violation of the existing laws. It is also a document of patent lobby's decisionmaking at the European Community level.
Federal Ministery of Justice and Logic Patents: Für alle Gesetzgebung im Bereich des Patentwesens ist innerhalb der Bundesregierung das Bundesministerium der Justiz (BMJ) zuständig. Das BMJ unterhält in seiner Abteilung für Industrie und Handel ein eigenes Patentreferat. Zum Geschäftsbereich des BMJ gehören ferner das Deutsche Patent- und Markenamt (DPMA), das Bundespatentgericht (BPatG) und der Bundesgerichtshof (BGH). Zu all diesen Organisationen und auch zum Europäischen Patentamt (EPA) hin bestehen innige personelle Verflechtungen. Das BMJ-Patentreferat ist personell schwach ausgestattet und verlässt sich daher auf EPA, DPMA und andere Patentbewegungs-Institutionen. Die Karierre der BMJ-Beamten verläuft häufig innerhalb des Patentwesens. Sie folgen im allgemeinen (aus Gewohnheit) wortgetreu deren (von wenigen Instanzen beschlossener) herrschender Meinung und beschränken die argumentative Auseinandersetzung meist von vorneherein auf grammatische Fragen. Innerhalb der Bundesregierung und des Europäischen Rates vertreten sie energisch die Interessen der Patentanwälte führender Großkonzerne und in zweiter Linie der Patentinstitutionen. Sie verbitten sich Einmischungen "fachfremder" Personen (einschließlich BMWi, Abgeordnete) in ihren Kreis und begegnen diesen durch Ignorieren oder sonstige Diskussionsverhinderungsstrategien. Auch von tausenden von Personen unterzeichnete Briefe an das BMJ-Patentreferat (Dr Welp) blieben bisher unbeantwortet.


Software Patents > Players > Ingo KOBER
Wolfgang TAUCHERT	Ingo KOBER	Jürgen SCHADE	Peter Hayward