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UNICE -- The Voice of European [Patent] Business

UNICE is an association of national industry associations for lobbying at the EU level. Its position concerning patents have, like those of most national industry associations, habitually been dominated by patent lawyers. UNICE papers on patent policy are rarely publicized outside of the circles of patent lawyers. Some papers are even published through patent law organs before they appear anywhere else. There is virtually no participation of engineers of software developpers, as can be seen from the lawyer-style in which they are written. UNICE treats the enunciations of patent offices and patent judges as sources of ultimate wisdom, at least as far as they are in favor of extensive patentability. UNICE has been instrumental in lobbying for the EU software patentability directive and has closely collaborated with the European Commission's patent lawyers in overcoming the resistance of other departments of the European Commission. Protest letters from (indirect) member companies have regularly been left without reply from UNICE. Patent-critical statements of member associations have not found any reflection in the UNICE position papers.

unice.org
Unice
UNICE 2002/09: CEC/BSA does not go far enough: This UNICE position paper was first published in "Mitteilungen der Patentanwälte" (MDP), a monthly bulletin of a german patent lawyer association. MDP does not say who the authors are and when the text was drafted or adopted. The text is evidently written from a patent lawyer perspective on the unquestioned presupposition that the software industry needs "patent protection". It complains about alleged insufficiencies of the CEC proposal in awarding this protection and in ensuring that any software innovation is beyond doubt patentable.
Unice 2002-06-25 position on the patentability of software: Unice asks the European Commission to remove all ambiguities from its directive proposal and to fully endorse the patentability of all innovative software the enforcability of patent claims against program texts on disk or on the internet. Although no author is named, the paper is characterised by patent lawyer beliefs and reasoning habits. It was not widely advertised in public and subsequently published without commentary in a german patent lawyer journal. Slightly earlier protest letters about Unice's position on software patents by Unice members were left unreplied and did not have any impact on the extremely pro-patent viewpoint taken by this paper.
Mandy Haberman to EuroParl 2002-11-21: UNICE miscited me as pro patent: In a speech before the European Parliament, Thales patent lawyer Nguyen, representing UNICE, falsely claimed that his association's member cited Mandy Haberman, a small software entrepreneur who has filed software patents, as an example of successful use of patents by small companies. Sylvain Perchaud pointed out that Haberman is a supporter of Europe Shareware (and thereby also Eurolinux) and shares our opposition against software patents. Ms Haberman has meanwhile confirmed this in a letter to the European Parliament. Indeed other Eurolinux members also posess some software patents but still believe that general patent disarmament would serve us better.
BDI: Bund der Deutschen Industrie(-Patentjuristen): Unice's german branch took its swpat position paper from Bitkom, where again it was drafted and pushed through by IBM patent lawyer Fritz Teufel.
MdP veröffentlicht Unice-Swpat-Papier: At