We are worried about the following developments:

1. The patent granting process remains slow, expensive and inefficient; a rapidly growing stream of broad monopoly claims with falsely presumed validity is burdening innovation worldwide;
2. The European Patent Organisation (EPOrg) is continuing to systematically grant patents on software and business methods against the letter and spirit of the written law and against the repeatedly expressed will of the European Parliament and several national parliaments;
3. Innovation policy in the European Union and its member states has been dominated by governmental patent officials and corporate patent lawyers, who have been working hard to promote the beliefs and interests of their own community;
4. The European patent establishment is strongly pushing for a draft European Patent Litigation Agreement (EPLA), which would block the development of a real European patent law and concentrate ever more legislative, judicial and administrative power in the hands of the same governmental patent officials who run the EPOrg;
5. While the European Parliament has unanimously called for “significant improvements to the EPLA text”, which address “concerns about democratic control, judicial independence and litigation costs”, the leading governmental lawmakers are pressing ahead with more or less unimproved variants of the text;

We call on Europe’s lawmakers to act as follows:

1. The EPO should stop granting patents on software and business methods, and instead follow the lead of the national courts and the European Parliament;
2. The European Union should, step by step, create its own community patent law, which would absorb and replace the European Patent Convention;
3. Europe’s future system of intellectual and industrial property should be organised in a lean and integrated manner that favors fast, cheap and narrow exclusion rights. A first step in this direction would be to debureaucratise examination and make polluters pay;
4. As long as there is no effective democratic lawmaking the European level, judicial power should not be Europeanised; national courts must remain available as correctives;
5. All statutory laws and rules applied by any European-level patent courts must be subject to effective review by elected legislators; member states should transfer the related legislative power to the European Parliament and national parliaments.

Sign this Call

This text is still subject to consultation, which can lead to changes. As you may have noted, you can remove your signature any time. You will be notified a week in advance before the Call is finalised and the number of signatures made public.

Other Calls

• Call for a New EU Constitution
• Call for an Ethical Patent System