UK Patent Orifice: Software Patentability Rally Brussels 2002-06-19

A similarly structured patent orifice had been set up by the UK patent establishment and organised by IBC in London on 2000-10-20, with Robert J Hart acting as the chairman. However there was a slightly larger participation of dissenting views than envisaged this time.

2002-06-19

Brussels

Chairman:

Roger Broadie
President TMPDF

09.00	Registration and coffee
09.30	Chairman's opening remarks
09.40	Outline of the Proposed Directive Anthony Howard DG Internal Market European Commission
10.20	Coffee
10.40	The EPO's Assessment of the Proposed Directive How it differs from EPO practice Dr. Gert Kolle European Patent Office, Munich
11.10	The UK Government's View The underlying economic issues Views of the software industry and business world Where we go from here Peter Hayward and Software Patents Divisional Director The UK Patent Office
11.40	The Effect of the Proposed Directive at National Level 1. Germany Fritz Teufel Head of IP Department IBM, Germany
12.00	2. UK The Impact on the Software Patent Industry Keith Beresford European Patent Attorney, Keith Beresford & Co
12.30	3. FRANCE Jacques Combeau* European Patent Attorney
13.00	Lunch
14.15	Implications for BioPharma and Bioinformatics Industries Current patent protection challenges In silico patent infringement Impact on the European Biopharma and Bioinformatics Industry's global competitiveness Compliance with TRIPS Alex Wilson Solicitor, Bristows
15.00	Tea
15.20	ROUND TABLE DISCUSSION The speakers will be joined by Open Source representative (Alan Cox, Director, RedHat)
16.30	Chairman's summary
16.35	Close of conference

by suggesting the following as a discussion basis ("for the time being", cc to the eurolinux mailing list, speaker not yet determined):

The IBC people then changed this to

The above version was, without any further communication, printed on a pamphlet and sent out to the potential participants, probably thousands of patent professionals, during the latter half of March.

The main differences between the versions are:

Eurolinux version	IBC version	comments
representing ... from the free and proprietary software world	representing ... from the free software world	This turns our statement into its opposite. Indeed 1/2 of the 300 Eurolinux sponsors write proprietary software, much of which runs on MS Windows or Mac OS. Yet it is the policy of the patent establishment to portray its critics as "opensource" or "free software" advocates and thus make them look like a minority.
legalise 30000 ridiculously trivial software patents, illegally granted by the EPO	legalise 30000 patents	This takes away our whole criticism.
plunge the patent system even deeper into chaos and dysfunctionality	plunge the patent system into chaos	This turns our statement into its opposite and makes it look ridiculously dramatic. The IBC version implies that the patent system is in order and the directive proposal has a huge impact. Our version said that it is already in chaos and the directive proposal pushes this a little further.

On 2002-03-28, when we protested against this rewriting of our text, IBC representative Anna D'Alton told us that our initial outline had to be amended because it had been too long and "too inflammatory".

It should be noted that even our first preliminary outline would not have been the longest on the program, and there was certainly room for consenting on changes, as long as our basic message was preserved.

But Anna didn't respond to Hartmut's mail. This mail also contained other questions and offers, such as an offer to bring more qualified speakers to the conference, so as to turn it into a real forum of dialogue.

It is quite clear what UK patent family is afraid of: dialogue. They must insist on conducting a virtual debate in Brussels in order to create the impression that any opposition to legalising their practise is only marginal. All the other speakers are carefully chosen to achieve this purpose, and critics are only allowed to appear in a marginalised role, carefully assigned to a minority position.

We have asked for a correction at least on the website (the thousands of leaflets alread printed and distributed will be difficult to correct), but again didn't receive a response.