Europe, Headlines

TRADE: Software Patent Delay Welcomed

Stefania Bianchi

BRUSSELS, Dec 22 2004 (IPS) - Campaigners have hailed the EU decision to postpone the adoption of controversial new rules for patenting computer-based inventions as a victory for “European democracy”.

European Union (EU) ministers decided to withdraw the European Commission’s proposed software patent directive from the agenda of a meeting on agriculture and fisheries Tuesday after a last-minute intervention by Poland.

Poland, whose backing is crucial for the adoption of the new rules, said it needed more time to consider the issue.

The proposals by the European Commission, the EU executive, are aimed at harmonising the way national patent laws deal with inventions using software. At the moment certain inventions can be protected by patent in some of the EU’s 25 member states but not in others.

If the directive comes into force, computer programmers would have to consider whether the code they are writing is infringing someone’s patent. The proposals for such a directive go back to 2002, although arguments about patenting software and computer-implemented inventions has been going on since the mid-1980s.

A patent gives the owner the right to stop anyone else using their invention, even if the other person invented it independently.

The European Commission says that the current legal system is “ambiguous” and insists that the introduction of software patents would “stimulate employment and make the system more transparent.”

Critics say the new directive would limit innovation by forcing programmers to spend time checking for patent infringements or simply avoiding working in potentially competitive areas. They add that it will also damage Europe’s computer industry.

EU agricultural ministers were expected simply to rubberstamp the proposals Tuesday, but Polish minister for science and information technology Wlodzimierz Marcinski arrived in Brussels to demand that the directive be dropped from the agenda.

Poland did not completely withdraw support for the proposals, but said it wanted to ensure that the rules would not open the door to the patenting of pure computer software.

“Poland is determined to favour unambiguous phrasing in European Community law,” Marcinski told EU ministers. “The phrasing (of the text) should…exclude the patenting of software.”

Critics, who say the law would favour large companies over small and innovative ones besides stifling innovation, have welcomed Poland’s intervention.

“Today, Poland saved European democracy and did a tremendous service to the European IT sector,” said Jonas Maebe from the University of Ghent, who has repeatedly lobbied the European Parliament over software patents. “The losers today are not the proponents of software patents. Today, everyone won, except for those who did everything in their power to push through this outdated agreement.”

The Foundation for a Free Information Infrastructure (FFII), a non-profit organisation dedicated to the spread of data processing literacy, echoed such approval.

“The fact that the unilateral declarations of concerns by member states contained more text than the actual directive itself, only accentuated the proposed text’s woeful lack of support and lack of democratic legitimacy,” it said following the announcement.

Small computer firms also welcomed the Polish intervention.

“By their clear-sighted action, Poland has strengthened the democracy of the European Union. We now have a chance to build a process which results in a directive on software patents that has wide popular support,” said Jacob Hallén, head of Strakt AB, a Swedish software company with 20 employees.

The European Parliament has already expressed its own doubts about the proposals and has clashed with the European Commission on the issue twice before. Its support is needed for the EU rules to become law.

“Patent rights, it is claimed, protect inventors, but in this case it is exclusively the interests of the big companies that are protected,” Eva Lichtenberg, a Green member of the European parliament said in a statement Wednesday (Dec. 22). “Smaller, innovative firms cannot afford the patenting and legal costs that the directive would inflict on them.”

But the European Information and Communication Technology Association (EICTA), the voice of Europe’s information and communications technology and consumer electronics industry expressed “extreme disappointment” over the EU decision to delay the vote on the proposals.

“Instead of becoming the world’s most competitive knowledge-based economy by 2010, we run the risk of being caught up in a negative spiral where other regions of the world can take advantage of European investment in innovation, while European companies in their home markets are weakened by imitation,” said EICTA director-general Mark MacGann.

The draft proposal could still be adopted at a meeting of the agricultural council tabled for January or by the competitiveness council in March, but campaigners hope that the Luxembourg presidency of the EU, which starts Jan. 1, will allow more discussion on the proposals.