Dans cette audition dans le Parlament Européen nous mettons de programmeurs, ingénieurs, entrepreneurs, juristes, économistes et politiciens ensemble pour discuter comment les brevets logiciels influencent le cadre régulatoire sous lequel les Petites et Moyennes Entreprises (PME) agissent. On veut obtenir plus de clarité sur la question de l'impacte de la législation proposée en vue de objectifs politiques de l'UE comme innovation, compétition, esprit d'entreprise, protection de consommateurs, administration mince, sécurité légale, sécurité de réseaux informatiques, E-Europe, E-Inclusion et "devenir la société d'information la plus compétitive du monde jusqu'à 2010".

• Temp et Lieu
• Introduction
• Propos de Programme
• Liens Annotés

Temp:

Jeudi 2003/05/08 09.00-12.30

Veuillez venir a l'Entrée du Parlament a 08:30. La procédure d'entrée peut durer un peu.

Lieu:

Parlament Européen

ASP (Batîment Spinelli)

01G2 (Salle Petra Kelly)

Traduction simultanée entre toutes les langues européennes disponible pour cette audition.

Introduction

The Greens/EFA are holding a hearing 09:00-12:00 May 8 in European Parliament (room 1G2) in Brussels. A number of well-known innovative software SMEs, including MySQL, Galeco, Ilog, and Opera, will express their views on software patents. Richard Stallman will speak about the effect of software patents on SME developers, and key researchers who have participated in Commission-funded studies will explain what the research shows.

Software are currently protected by copyright but there a European directive (com 2002-092) has been proposed that would legalize patents on software, as is the case in the U.S. Many Members of Parliament believe that the patent system is not suitable for software, but rapporteur Arlene McCarthy (UK, Labour) favors patents for software. Others believe that SME issues have not yet been properly taken into account and that the costs software patents impose warrant further research and deeper analysis before Europe is locked in.

While individual patents theoretically provide protection for innovators large and small, in practice the easy availability of patents creates a numbers game that favors large established companies with patenting over SMEs. SMEs fear that legalisation of 30,000 software patents issued on a shaky legal basis by the EPO (with many more on the way) would subject them to ever greater risks, especially since large companies in the U.S. have been setting up licensing operations designed to maximize returns to their patent portfolios. Recent hearings held by U.S. competition agencies show that intensive patenting in the ICT sector has made inadvertent infringement commonplace.

Research also shows that developers believe that patents will adversely affect the future of open source software. In fact, one survey by a proponent of software patents shows that fear of inadvertent patent infringement is a substantial deterrent to corporate use of open source software. Developers generally believe that copyright is well-suited to encouraging software development, and many worry that patents will undermine the confidence and certainty that copyright provides.

The presentations and discussion with MEPs will cover the range of costs and benefits SMEs see in software patents. Software professionals and developers with an interest in the question are urged to attend. Related events around the hearing include:

1. "Software PatentsFrom Legal Wording to Economic Reality" will take place at the Dorint Hotel in Brussels all day on May 7 and the afternoon of May 8. The symposium will address the many legal, technical, and economic aspects of software patents -- beyond their impact on SMEs, the subject of conference in the Parliament. It will be keynoted by Professor Lawrence Lessig, author of "Code and other Laws of Space" and "The Future of Ideas". Commissioner Mozelle Thompson of the U.S. Federal Trade Commission will also speak, and the panels will offer a mix of academic, patent practitioner, industry, and policy perspectives. This conference is co-sponsored by FFII/Eurolinux and the Open Society Institute.
2. On May 8th, immediately after the hearing at the Parliament, a festive gathering "Free ideas for a free world" will take place in front of Parliament at Place du Luxembourg, complete with street theater and a buffet.
3. For registration an participation, please contact

   Laurence Vandewalle
   lvandewalle at europarl eu int
   +32-2-2841695

   .

Propos de Programme

L'audition sera organisée par les Verts/EEL et va peut-être organisée différemment. Le suivant n'est qu'un propos.

time	subject	who
09.00	Politicians' Questions What is the role of SMEs be in this process What the Legislator needs to learn from SMEs and software innovation leaders	MEP Daniel Cohn-Bendit, MEP Elly Plooj Van-Gorsel
09.30	Statements of Software Innovation Leaders	Richard Stallman (gnu.org) David Axmark (CTO, MySQL, Suède)
10.00	Have Software Patents "Helped SMEs Grow into Sizeable Software Companies"? -- SME Interests and How the EU is assessing them How have European Commission, JURI and EU Council taken interests of SMEs into account? On what evidence have they relied in building their economic rationale for software patents? What does evidence from US (e.g. FTC hearings) and EU teach us?	Dr. Puay Tang (University of Sussex, Author of an EU-sponsored study on the role of patents in SMEs) Dr. Peter Holmes (University of Sussex, economist, co-author or a much-cited EU-sponsored study on software patents) Reinier Bakels (Univirsity of Amsterdam, author of an EU-sponsored study) Mozelle W. Thompson (Commissioner, Federal Trade Commission, USA) Prof. Brian Kahin (University of Michigan)
11.00	Short SME Position Statements and Discussion	Håkon Wium Lie (CTO, opera.com, Norvége) Robert Dewar (Ada Core Technologies, USA) Thorsten Lemke (lemkesoft.com, Allemagne) Jacob Hallen (president of Python Business Forum, CEO of AB Strakt, Suède) Franco Gasperoni (act-europe.com, France) Felix Gaehtgens (CEO, symlabs.com, Portugal) David Hughes (hcc-embedded.com, flash file systems, Hongrie) Bas Doeksen (MD, river.nl, Pays-Bas) Richard Clark (MD, Elysium Ltd, UK) Wojtek Narczynski (power.com.pl, custom web software, Pologne) Ivo Geilenbrügge (Segger Microcontroller Systeme GmbH, Allemagne) DEIM Ágoston (CEO, lsc.hu, Hongrie)
12.00	Political Conclusions How should policy decisions on software property be taken and by whom? Have SME interests been adequately taken into account by the EU's Legislative Process to Date? What needs to be done? Where do we go from here?	Daniel Cohn-Bendit Elly Plooj-Van Gorsel Mercedes Echerer ...

Liens Annotés

Recherches sur les effets macroéconomiques du système de brevets Depuis le rapport de Fritz Machlup délivré au congrés américain en 1958, il y a toute une série d'études sur les éffets du système de brevets sur diverses domaines de l'économie Citations sur la Question de la Brevetabilité des Règles d'Organisation et de Calcul Citations de textes juridiques, analyses économiques, document politiques ainsi que énoncés de programmeurs, politiciens et autres partis qui s'intéressent au débat sur les limites de la brevetabilité vis-a-vis le logiciel Ensemble de tests pour la législation sur les limites de la brevetabilité Pour tester la capacité d'un loi sur la brevetabilité, nous devons essayer des innovations exemples. Chaque exemple est décrit par un état de la technique, un enseignement technique et une série de revendications. Dans l'hypothèse que ces déscriptions sont pertinentes, nous essayons notre nouvelle règle de loi. Notre attention se porte sur (1) la clarté (2) l'éffet macro-économique du resultat: la réglementation proposée mène-t-elle à une décision prévisible? Quelles revendications seront acceptées? Ce résultat exprime-t-il nos souhaits? Nous essayons différentes propositions de lois sur la même série d'exemples (Testsuite) et comparons lesquelles réussissent le mieux. Pour un programmeur c'est une question d'honneur que de "supprimer les erreurs avant de diffuser le programme" (first fix the bugs, then release the code). Les ensembles de tests sont un moyen connu pour atteindre ce but. D'après l'article 27 ADPIC (TRIPS) la législation appartient à un "domaine de la technique" notamment "d'ingénierie sociale" (social engineering), n'est-ce pas ? Technicité ici ou là, il est temps d'aborder de ce côté la législation avec cette rigueur méthodique, qui est partout annoncée, où les mauvaises décisions de construction peuvent fortement porter atteinte à la vie des individus. McCarthy 2003-02-19: Propos de Directive Brevets Logiciels 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. Swpat Conference Amsterdam 2002-08-30..1 (Columbanus Symposium) Hartmut Pilch is attending a conference hosted by Prof. Bernt Hugenholz and Reinier Bakels from University of Amsterdam about the typology of innovations in the software and business method area and the implications of various rules for defining what is patentable, including the European Commission's recent proposal for a directive and hopefully also our widely supported counter-proposal. Information Economy and Swpat Conference Paris 20020610-1 Institut Français des Relations Internationales (IFRI.org) and Center of Information Policy Research at Mariland University (CIP.umd.org) are organising a transatlantic conference on information economy and in particular on the limits of patentability as well as the problems in neighboring areas such as database exclusion rights and copyright. Hartmut Pilch is participating on behalf of FFII and Eurolinux on two of the panels.