amend or reject software patents directive

A day before the European Patent Office (EPO) will hold its first "Patent Information Day" ever in the European Parliament, the FFII has distributed a letter to all 732 MEPs offering its views on how to proceed with the troubled software patents directive. Since the EP has only 4 months to conclude its second reading, a potential challenge of the way the Council acted at the 7 March meeting would have to be performed in parallel with the legislative work.

The legislative procedure will continue with the official announcement of the Council's text in the European Parliament around 7 April. The EP's Legal Affairs Committee will probably finalise its approach in June, where it can decide to advise to amend or reject the directive. The plenary vote will then take place in July.

If the European Parliament once again strongly speaks out against the EPO practice of granting US-style software patents, it will come out as the strongest party in the Conciliation near the end of the procedure, as both the Commission and Council are internally strongly divided over the issue. In this case, the directive may in the end actually achieve what the Commission states as the original goals: clarification and stopping US style software and business method patents.

On the topic of rejection, Hartmut Pilch, President of the FFII, notes:

'We can't really expect the Parliament to spend its time diving into gory details of patent law. In a democracy, the executive would draft the laws in conformance with the demands of the elected legislators. In the EU, the Parliament has to do the homework of an unwilling executive, and we can't really blame them if at a certain point they
say No, so as to simplify their life and protect themselves against legislative spamming by incompetent administration officials. A Parliament that can say No might even be the best we can get under the current EU framework.'

Although a good directive is preferable to having no directive, the awareness raised about this issue would not die together with this directive project and other ways to solve the software patent problems do exist. On the other hand, a directive which codifies the EPO's current practices would severely obstruct such alternative approaches. Having the European Court of Justice as the ultimate authority is no good if the law says it can only judge software patents to be uniformly enforceable all over Europe.

Jonas Maebe, FFII Board Member, adds:

'The EPO lobbying politicians to promote software patents is a bit like
some Department of Housing promoting the handing out of more building
permits. We hope our letter and its annexes can give MEPs more balanced
information than the EPO's simplistic oneliners like "Idea + Patent =
Innovation". Economic policy making should not be based on unfounded
claims by the EPO and emotional pleas by its largest customers, but on
sound economic evidence and the desires of the involved sectors as a
whole.'