In the name of the European Information and Communications Technology Industry Association, an anonymous patent lawyer explains that software patents are good for innovation and competition and even helpful and fair for opensource software, because opensource companies can use patents to impose their business model on others. Moreover the study of Bessen & Maskin is based on old data and wrong models, the patent expert says. The style and content of these statements attributed to EICTA indicate that the anonymous patent lawyer is Fritz Teufel, chief patent politician of IBM in Germany and Europe. A look at the EICTA website, as of 2002-02-24, shows that EICTA has not published this paper nor any other paper on software patents. The association has evidently not engaged in any discussions on this subject, which so far was not of great concern for the European software industry.

Teufel has been until 2000 the head of the industrial property workgroup in EICTA's strongest member organisation, Bitkom of Germany. At Cebit 2001, his successor, Ms Bremer, told Hartmut Pilch that the Bitkom members were divided on the subject of software patentability and had therefore abstained from participation in the consultation but instead EICTA had participated. Later, Bremer submitted a paper to a German Parliamentary hearing which is evidently by the same author, PA Fritz Teufel. We know this from many meetings and panel discussions in which Teufel argued in the same peculiar way.

EICTA and Software Patents The European Information and Communication Technology Association (EICTA) is a coalition of national associations for lobbying at the EU level. Their positions on software patents have been dominated by patent lawyers from the patent arms of large corporate members, such as IBM's Fritz Teufel, who has alsow dominated the position of the german EICTA member BITKOM, and not been supported by any information about the enterpreneurial calculus of the member companies or other informations beyond the usual patent lawyer belief statements. The BITKOM decision was taken by a committee consisting of 7 mega-corporporation patent lawyers and one SME representative who opposed software patentability. Bitkom: Voice of IT corporate patent lawyers in Germany The German Information and Telecomunication Industry Association Bitkom, one of the influential members of the European EICTA.org, began in 2001 to get involved in questions of patent policy. The activity was conducted in a closed circle of patent lawyers, dominated by IBM's european patent deparment head Fritz Teufel. This circle published a first statement in support of the CEC/BSA directive proposal in spring 2002 after adoption by the meeting between 7 patent lawyers of large corporations, held by the IP workgroup under the presidence of Teufel. This workgroup later published a survey which tries to demonstrate that the software industry wants patents. This survey was used for supporting talks with politicians for many month before the survey was finally published, after we had reported about it. The survey does not show what its authors claim it shows. PA Fritz Teufel Patent lawyer, software patentability guru, patent department head of IBM in Germany and Europe, working in Stuttgart, active promoter of software patents, responsible for pushing many landmark cases through the EPO and the German courts. Ghostwriter of various patent papers of German and European trade associations. Positions and style well known from public discussions. Hardline advocate of software patentability and very much in love with certain dogmatic fallacies which he successfully used to win over the (already very inclined) EPO and BGH in a series of decisive battles. Do not expect Teufel to understand the viewpoint of opensource programmers or to come up with solutions to non-juridical problems. Expect him to stick to EPO fallacies as steadfastly as anyone. These fallacies constitute his success experience before the lawcourts. IBM and Software Patents IBM's patent department is actively lobbying Europe to legalise software patents. They have invested millions in fighting example cases to leading European lawcourts such as the EPO's Technical Boards of Appeal and the German Federal Court in order to soften and eventually remove European restrictions on patenting software. They have also threatened European politicians that IBM might close down local facilities if software patents are not legalised in Europe. IBM has also prevented the US government from conducting studies on the value of software patents for the national economy. In the wake of the Opensource hype, IBM's rhetoric has become relatively moderate, but nonetheless it is supported by real pressure. IBM has acquired approximately 1000 European software patents whose legal status is currently unclear. Given the great number of software patents in IBM's hands, IBM is one of the few software companies who may have a genuine interest in software patentability. Once software patents become assertable in Europe, an IBM tax of several hundered million EUR may be levied on European software companies. Bitkom: Voice of IT corporate patent lawyers in Germany The German Information and Telecomunication Industry Association Bitkom, one of the influential members of the European EICTA.org, began in 2001 to get involved in questions of patent policy. The activity was conducted in a closed circle of patent lawyers, dominated by IBM's european patent deparment head Fritz Teufel. This circle published a first statement in support of the CEC/BSA directive proposal in spring 2002 after adoption by the meeting between 7 patent lawyers of large corporations, held by the IP workgroup under the presidence of Teufel. This workgroup later published a survey which tries to demonstrate that the software industry wants patents. This survey was used for supporting talks with politicians for many month before the survey was finally published, after we had reported about it. The survey does not show what its authors claim it shows. Bessen & Maskin 2000: Sequential Innovation This article is written by two researcher from MIT and concludes, after giving mathematical models and experimental evidence, that in a dynamic world such as the software industry or consulting industry, firms may have plenty of incentive to innovate without patents and patents may constrict complementary innovation. It concludes that copyright protection for software programs (which has gone through its own evolution over the last decade) may have achieved a better balance than patent protection. This new model suggests another, different rationale for narrow patent breadth than the recent economic literature on this subject.