The European Parliament voted on September 24th for a directive proposal which confirms the existing European law, makes software explicitely unpatentable and codifies additional safeguards, such as freedom of publication and interoperation. The amended directive proposal thereby achieves the claimed aims of the European Commission, especially "harmonisation and clarification of the status quo" and "prevention of a drift toward US-style patentability of pure software and business methods". However, the European Commission doesn't seem to be happy. Internal Market Commissioner Frits Bolkestein and others have been threatening to withdraw the directive project and to pass the ball back to national patent administrators and, should that fail, to rely on brotherly help from Washington. But the European Parliament was neither deceived nor intimidated. Now the patent movement's strategy is to dismiss the Parliament's position as "unworkable" and to attribute it to "ignorance" rather than to a conscious policy decision. Bolkestein's friends can be counted on to resort to whatever inconsistency, illoyalty or illegality is necessary in order to obtain what they really want: "legal security" for the owners of more than 30,0000 US-style patents on software and business methods, granted in accordance with a law-to-be, which the European Parliament has refused to pass for them. A few months of intense struggle lie ahead.
The
amended directive speaks for itself. Art 1-6 exclude software from patentability in multiple ways and form a cohesive whole, which, in contrast to the European Commission's illogical proposal, is completely congruent with Article 52 of the Euroepan Patent Convention and Art 27 of the TRIPs treaty. Please read the whole text carefully. Here we just have room to cite a few passages:
Considérant 7
En vertu de la Convention sur la délivrance de brevets européens signée à Munich, le 5 octobre 1973, et du droit des brevets des États membres, les programmes d’ordinateurs ainsi que les découvertes, théories scientifiques, méthodes mathématiques, créations esthétiques, plans, principes et méthodes dans l’exercice d’activités intellectuelles, en matière de jeu ou dans le domaine des activités économiques et les présentations d’informations, ne sont pas considérés comme des inventions et sont donc exclus de la brevetabilité. Cette exception s’applique parce que lesdits objets et activités n’appartiennent à aucun domaine technique.
Article 2b.
"contribution technique" , également appelée "invention", désigne une contribution à l’état de la technique dans un domaine technique. Le caractère technique de la contribution est une des quatre conditions de la brevetabilité. En outre, pour mériter un brevet, la contribution technique doit être nouvelle, non évidente et susceptible d'application industrielle.
2ba. "domaine technique" désigne un domaine industriel d'application nécessitant l'utilisation de forces contrôlables de la nature pour obtenir des résultats prévisibles. "Technique" signifie "appartenant à un domaine technique". L'utilisation de forces de la nature pour contrôler des effets physiques au delà de la représentation numérique de l'information appartient à un domaine technique. La production, la manipulation, le traitement, la distribution et la présentation de l'information n'appartiennent pas à un domaine technique, même si des dispositifs techniques sont utilisés dans ce but.
2bb. "industrie", au sens du droit des brevets, signifie "production automatisée de biens matériels";
Article 3a.
Les États membres veillent à ce que le traitement des données ne soit pas considéré comme un domaine technique au sens du droit des brevets et à ce que les innovations en matière de traitement des données ne constituent pas des inventions au sens du droit des brevets.
5.1.b. Les États membres veillent à ce que la production, la manipulation, le traitement, la distribution et la publication de l'information, sous quelque forme que ce soit, ne puisse jamais constituer une contrefaçon de brevet, directe ou indirecte, même lorsqu'un dispositif technique est utilisé dans ce but.
6a. Les États membres veillent à ce que, lorsque le recours à une technique brevetée est nécessaire à une fin significative, par exemple pour assurer la conversion des conventions utilisées dans deux systèmes ou réseaux informatiques différents, de façon à permettre entre eux la communication et l'échange de données, ce recours ne soit pas considéré comme une contrefaçon de brevet.
US patent attorney Erwin Basinski
reports to AIPLA, the patent lawyer lobby organisation, about what he -- not quite incorrectly -- sees as the success of our work in the European Parliament:
The EU Parliament recently voted on the Proposed Software Directive. The text as amended (a copy is attached) appears to completely eliminate any software patent and make unenforceable most existing patents.
[...]
The apparent influence of the open source community on the members of Parliament and the Parliament's general apparent lack of understanding of the technological and business advances resulting from the current and predicted use of computer related inventions, are truly remarkable and illustrate the political nature of the problems.
[...]
As to the amendments themselves, to me the most onerous are
32 (which is just incorrect);
95 (which would put the EPO out of business);
84; all of the amendments to Article 2 (
36,
42,
117,
107,
69,
55rev,
97,
108,
38,
44 et
118) (which would negate any software related invention);
45 (makes no sense when you consider the billions of dollars/euros invested in the financial/banking/stock market and related industries to make those services function);
70;
60;
102 and
111;
72;
103 and
119;
104 and
120;
76 (reworded Article 6a is still destructive of most existing software patents by itself).
My sources on the Commission are trying to determine what to do. They believe the Council will reject this version and send it back to Parliament for a second reading (vote) but the question is whether it can be saved at all. I think our hope is it will either just die or be withdrawn by the Commission.
Another patent attorney
reports:
The users of the patent system have just suffered a severe political defeat, even if the Council manages to rectify the current situation. This was probably the very first time since the patent disputes of the nineteenth century that patent law was in the headlines. The controversy on patents will continue, that is for sure.
[...]
After having studied the result of yesterday's voting of the European Parliament I must say that the situation is much more worse than I had feared before. The gist of what the directive says is that preferably no patents should be granted on anything that is related to computers, and if under some narrow preconditions exceptionally a patent is ever granted there are such burdens put upon the applicant that it would be rendered virtually worthless. For example, Article 2, point (bb) of the Directive now narrows the term "industry" to the "automated production of material goods". This is simply absurd.
[...]
The Eurolinux activists clearly have overshot their mark: They have managed to bring so many of their preferred amendments in a redundant, self-contradictory and amateurish fashion into the wording of the Directive that every person skilled in IP law recognises without need for further explanation or persuasion that the text as amended by the Parliament is rubbish. This will clearly help the EU Commission as well as the EU Council to move this version into the trash bin. Also it can be expected that the U.S. would start formal WTO proceedings against the EU due to violation of Article 27 of the TRIPS agreement if the EU Council should be trapped so much in bewilderment that they eventually conclude to allow this amended draft to enter into force.
The misinformation campaign staged by the Eurolinux Alliance is really horrendous. The most abhorrent but nevertheless successful tactics instrumentalised by FFII e.V. was the allegation repeated again and again that in particular the EPO has granted tens of thousands of so-called "software patents" (i.e. patents on computer-implemented inventions) in contradiction to the law as it is codified by the European Patent Convention (EPC).
These patent lawyers are of course exaggerating our success and our efficiency in an attempt to mobilise their colleagues for a backlash.
Yet some basic facts can not be denied:
- The European Parliament has voted for a directive text which, if enacted, would effectively protect Europe's software developpers from patents.
- Although this is unrelated to questions of open vs closed source and many of our supporters write proprietary software, we were undoubtedly at the core of a large-scale organised effort. You may want to browse through the swpat.ffii.org website, starting from the news up to September 24th, to get an idea of this.
- Those who donated to our campaign got real value for their money. Please read the text of the amended directive and compare it to the text of the European Commission and the FFII Counter Proposal.
- A backlash from the patent lobby is under way. The Council is far less friendly territory than the Parliament. We need a few people doing full-time work, and we will have further costs.
- It is time for our supporters in the US and elsewhere to take the software patent issue out of the hands of the patent lawyers and bring it into their parliaments. The US government has already been abused by the US Patent Office for lobbying against the proposed directive. Although the US patent lobby's TRIPs charges are legally without any merit, they can serve as a pretext for politicians here to deprive the parliament of its competence in patent policy matters.
We will send more detailed calls for action to our supporters and donors within a few days.
Liens annotés
PE 2003-09-24: Directive Brevets Logiciels Amendées- Version consolidée des principales provisions (Art 1-6) de la Directive "sur la brevetabilité des inventions mises en oevre par ordinateur" pour lesquelles le parlament européen a voté le 24 septembre de 2003.
- EU Parliament Votes for Real Limits on Patentability
- In its plenary vote on the 24th of September, the European Parliament approved the proposed directive on "patentability of computer-implemented inventions" with amendments that clearly restate the non-patentability of programming and business logic, and uphold freedom of publication and interoperation.
- AIPLA 06-10-03 : Le Parlement européen rend le logiciel non brevetable
- L'avocat en brevet Erwin Basinski, président du Sous-comité aux affaires internationales du droit sur l'électronique et les ordinateurs de l'Association des avocats en propriété industrielle américaine (AIPLA) appelle le monde du brevet américain à prendre les armes contre la directive amendée du Parlement Européen, qui rendrait les brevets accordés caducs et, et en excluant ce que Basinski appelle "la technologie logicielle" de la brevetabilité, violerait l'article 27 de l'ADPIC. Basinski attribue les amendements à l'énorme puissance du "lobby open source". Basinski, un spécialiste dans l'art du brevetage des méthodes pour l'exercice d'activités économiques à l'Office Européen des Brevets et un diplomate ayant d'excellente relations avec la Commission Européenne, semble être plutôt pessimiste sur la possibilité d'amender la directive de sorte qu'elle retrouve sa teneur originale. Il recommande que l'AIPLA et ses amis travaillent pour qu'elle soit supprimée par le Conseil.
- Pourquoi Amazon One Click Shopping est brevetable selon la proposition de directive de l'UE
- La "Mission des États-Unis d'Amérique auprès de l'Union européenne" à Bruxelles a envoyé un long document "via les États-Unis", intitulé "Commentaires des États-Unis sur les projets d'amendements du Parlement européen sur la proposition de directive de l'Union Européenne sur la brevetabilité des inventions mises en oeuvre par ordinateur" à de nombreux membres du Parlement européen. "Les États-Unis" préviennent que l'Europe pourrait avoir de problèmes avec le traité ADPIC si elle entérine la proposition de directive telle qu'amendée par le Parlement. En particulier, "les États-Unis" pensent que la conversion entre format de fichier breveté ne devrait pas être autorisé sans licence, et demande donc la suppression de l'article 6a. De plus "les États-Unis" citent les mêmes études de la BSA et le même raisonnement qui apparaît dans la proposition de directive de la Commission européenne, et préviennent que tout échec à ne pas avaliser fermement la brevetabilité logicielle dans la directive pourrait "inversement toucher certains autres secteurs de l'économie", car "le droit d'auteur ne protège pas la fonctionnalité du logiciel, qui a aussi une valeur significative pour le propriétaire", et le manque de clarté dans le concept de "contribution technique" conduirait à un besoin continu de négociations avec les États-Unis au sein de l'Organisation mondiale de la propriété intellectuelle (OMPI) et d'autres forums. Cet avertissement vient peu de temps après une lettre similaire au MPE du gouvernement du Royaume-Uni. Cela fait partie du "Plan d'action" du gouvernement des États-Unis pour "promouvoir l'harmonisation internationale du droit positif sur les brevets" afin de "renforcer les droits de propriété intellectuelle des détenteurs américains en rendant l'obtention d'une protection internationale plus facile pour leurs inventions". Ce plan a été soutenu agressivement par les hauts fonctionnaires de l'Office américain des brevets et des marques dans des forums internationaux tels le OMPI, le Sommet mondial sur la société de l'information (SMSI/WSIS) et l'Organisation de coopération et de développement économiques (OCDE) aussi bien que dans les négociations bilatérales.
- Bolkestein's Threats
- One day before the vote Bolkestein told the MEPs:
Now I am aware that the large number of amendments to the McCarthy report have been tabled. Many of those try to re-introduce ideas and themes which were already considered and rejected by the committee during the preparation of the report. There are some interesting points, but in the main, I am afraid that the majority of those amendments will be unacceptable to the Commission. And I must confess, to being very concerned about this situation. Many of these amendments are fundamental, and there is the very real possibility of the failure of the proposal if the parliament chooses to accept them. If that were to happen, there would I fear be two consequences, neither of which I suspect has been forseen by some mebers of parliament, and neither of which I can only assume would advance the objectives which seem to lie behind a number of amendments. Firstly, in the complete absence of harmonisation at the level of the community, the European and various national patent offices would be free to continue their current practice of issuing patents for software-implemented inventions which may blur or even cross the line in undermining the exclusion from patentability of software as such under article 52 of the European Patent Convention. And the result would be not only continuing legal uncertainty and divergence for inventors; but also erode the position which I think almost everyone in this room and above all the Commission itself wants -- namely to maintain the exclusion of pure software from patentability. That we do not want. That the proposal rejects. And secondly, in the absence of harmonisation at Community level, member states would be very likely to pursue harmonisation at the European level instead. And may I explain what I mean by that remark. Unlike many fields, patents are unusual in that as a result of the existence of the European Patent Convention, and the creation of the European Patent Office, there already exists a supranational patent system, which covers the whole of the European Union, and indeed beyond, and which can act independently of the Community's legislative process. Now if we fail in our efforts to achieve a harmonisation of patent law relating to computer-implemented inventions in the European Union, we may well be confronted with a renegotiation of the European Patent Convention. And if I may be blunt, President, the process of renegotiation of the European Patent Convention would not require any contribution from this parliament. So the situation is clear: there is a single objective but a choice of means. Either we proceed using the community method, or we take a back seat and watch while member states go via the route of an intergovernmental treaty. And I think it is clear which route would give European citizens a greater say through this parliament in patent legislation in an area which is so crucial to our economy.
- The TRIPs Treaty and Software Patents
- European patent authorities often cite the TRIPs treaty as a reason for making computer programs and business methods patentable and for making such patents enforcable in the most indecent ways. This reasoning is fallacious and easy to refute.
- Conseil de l'Union Européenne et Brevets Logiciels
- Together with the European Commission and the European Parliament, the Council is one of the three pillars of the European Union, which jointly legislate in a co-decision procedure. It is a forum where the national governments and their specialised ministries meet. The question of how to limit patentability is handled in the "Council Working Party on Intellectual Property and Patents". This council has been holding increasingly frequent meetings to discuss the European Commission's proposal for a software patentability directive and come up with a counter-proposal. The national delegations are mostly composed of national patent office representatives or people whose career path is confined to the national patent establishment and who are factually dependent on this establishment in many ways. Some delegations, such as the french and belgians, have comprised independent delegates and been fairly critical of the CEC proposal. Others have been even more pro-patent than the CEC. All have focussed on textual questions and caselaw rather than on what kind of output they want from the legislation in terms of patents granted/rejected and economic policy objectives.
- Software Patent Discussions in and near the European Parliament in 2003
- The European Parliament may pass or reject the Software Patentability Directive Proposal of the European Commission immediately after plenary discussion on 2003-09-01. The most likely course is that it will propose amendments. Currently many members of the three concerned commissions (juri, itre, cult) have lost confidence in the Newspeak from the European Patent Office (EPO), in which the proposal is written. We are trying to keep track of the Parliament's schedule and to organise some complementary occasions for an informed discussion. In fact we want more than that: justice. The patent lobby has trampled on our rights without justification and is asking MEPs to perpetuate the injustice. We ask for a fair trial. Only the European Parliament can offer it.
- Comment vous pouvez nous aider a mettre fin au cauchemare des brevets logiciels
- Die Patentbewegung konnte über Jahrzehnte hinweg Unternehmen und Regierungen für ihre Expansionsbestrebungen gewinnen. Rollende Züge sind schwer anzuhalten. FFII, Eurolinux und viele andere haben sich seit Jahren mit Erfolg dieser Arbeit gewidmet. Aber noch rollte der Zug, und wir haben wir viel mehr Aufgaben als freie Hände. Hier erklären wir, wie Sie unsere Arbeit voranbringen können.
- Current Situation in Europe
- Situation before the Vote in the European Parliament
- FFII: Brevets logiciels en Europe
- Ces dernières années, l'Office Européen des Brevets a, en contradiction à la fois avec la lettre et avec l'esprit du droit positif, accordé environ trente mille brevets sur des règles d'organisation et de calcul revendiquées en termes d'ordinateur universel ("programmes d' ordinateurs" selon la loi, "inventions mises en oeuvre par ordinateur" selon la novlangue de l'OEB adoptée en 2000). A présent, le mouvement européen pro-brevet veut entériner cette pratique en édictant une nouvelle directive. Tandis que le mouvement de brevets a perdu deux batailles majeures en novembre 2000 et septembre 2003, les programmeurs européens se voient confrontés à des risques considérables. Vous trouverez ci-dessous la documentation sur le débat actuel, commençant par une courte introduction et l'actualité.
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