The Eurolinux Alliance invites members of the European Parliament to a discussion about the EU software patent directive project on wednesday 2003-03-12 15.00-16.30 in room S 2.3 of Louise Weiss Building in Strasburg.

• Time and Place
• Invitation
• Subjects of discussion
• Relevant Reading

Wednesday 2003/03/12 15.00-16.30 Strasburg LoW S2.3

Invitation

Dear Parlamentarians

You are currently faced with a directive proposal "for the patentablity of computer-implemented inventions". According to this proposal, abstract rules, principles and problems can become the property of a patent applicant, as far as they are "implemented" on the Universal Computer. You are the first elected legislative body of the world which has to decide whether people can be excluded from using abstract rules, principles and problems in their most generalised contemporary form. The European Patent Office has already granted more than 30000 such patents since 1986. You are now asked to supply the missing legal basis for these patents, so that national courts can no longer declare these patents to be invalid or inapplicable.

We would like to invite you to a discussion about the EU software patent directive project on wednesday 2003-03-12 15.00-16.30 in room S 2.3 of Louise Weiss Building in Strasburg, as well as to further monthly meetings.

The purpose of this meeting is exchanging ideas before the JURI discussion of March 17, including analysis of the

McCarthy Report

CEC Software Patent Directive Draft and Amendment Proposals

http://swpat.ffii.org/events/2003/europarl/index.en.html

We hope to see you soon and thank you for attaching importance to the freedom and productivity of European citizens and businesses in the information age.

Sincerely

Subjects of discussion

• Typology of computer-related patents: Examples, Classification Criteria, Statistics, Trends
• Which of patents should be granted and which not? Which selection criteria can work?
• What can be clarified at the level of written law?
• What is there to "harmonise" in European Substantive Patent Law?
• Is a EU directive the right legal instrument?
• Relation of the software patent directive project to European constitutional law
• Criticism of various variants and amendments of the directive proposal
• The future of patents, copyright and related systems in Europe

Relevant Reading

Bitkom Survey: 60% against extension of patentability How EICTA is basing representation claims on misinterpreted answers to misleading questions McCarthy 2003-02-19: Amended Software Patent Directive Proposal Arlene McCarthy, British Labor MEP appointed by the European Parliament's Committee for Legal Affairs and the Internal Market (JURI) to report on the European Commission's Software Patentability Directive Proposal (CEC/BSA Proposal), suggests that the European Parliament should enact the CEC/BSA version with additional safeguards to align Europe on the US practise and make sure that there can be no limit on patentability. McCarthy reiterates the CEC/BSA software patent advocacy and misrepresents the wide-spread criticism without citing any of it. Even economic and legal expertises ordered by the European Parliament and other critical opinions of EU institutions are not taken into account. McCarthy's economic argumentation consists of tautologies and unfounded assertions, such as that companies like Ericsson and Alcatel need software patents to finance their R&D, that SMEs need european software patents in order to compete in the USA, that patents are needed to keep developping countries at bay. McCarthy uses the term "computer-implemented inventions" as a synonym for "software innovations". These "by their very nature belong to a field of technology". McCarthy insists that "irreconcilable conflicts" with the EPO must be avoided. McCarthy says she wants to "set clear limits as to what is patentable" -- and that she wants to avoid the "sterile discussions" about "technical effects" and "exclusions from patentability". Yet her proposal stays confined to such discussions. McCarthy demands that all useful ideas, including algorithms and business methods, must be patentable as "computer-implemented inventions". McCarthy proposes to recognise the EPO as Europe's supreme patent legislator and to make decisions of a few influential people at the EPO irreversible and binding for all of Europe. EU Software Patent Directive Amendment Proposals The European Commission proposed on 2002-02-20 to consider computer programs as patentable inventions and make it very difficult not to grant a patent on an algorithm or a business method that is claimed with the typical features of a computer program (e.g. computer, i/o, memory etc). We have worked out a counter-proposal that upholds the freedom of computer-aided reasoning, calculating, organising and formulating and the copyright property-based property rights of software authors while supporting the patentability of technical inventions (problem solutions involving forces of nature) according to the differentiations that have been laid down in the European Patent Convention (EPC), the TRIPs treaty and the classical patent law literature. This counter-proposal is receiving support from numerous prominent players in the fields of software, economics, politics and law.