On Monday 1st September, the European Parliament will decide about the software patent directive COM(2002)92 2002/0047, euphemistically titled "on the patentability of computer-implemented inventions".

The directive draft as amended by the rapporteur Arlene McCarthy with support of the Legal Affairs Committe would make calculation rules and business methods such as Amazon One Click Shopping patentable, as in the USA. 30,000 US-style software patents which the European Patent Office has recently granted against the letter and spirit of the current law would become enforceable in Europe, and national judges, who have criticised the EPO's practise^[1] and refused to follow it^[2], would moreover be obliged to make practically anything man-made under the sun (or "all practical problem solutions", as a leading EPO judge put it) patentable.

These plans are not popular. They have met strong criticism from

• Our Call for Action, signed by 350 organisations and companies and 15000 individuals, which asks for rejection of the directive and proposes a comprehensive set of amendments which could make the directive acceptable.
• A recent petition of 10 leading economists to the European Parliament
• A recent petition of 30 famous European computer scientists to the European Parliament
• The Eurolinux Petition for a Free Europe without Software Patents, supported by 160,000 signatories, including 2000 CEOs and 3000 scientists
• The Opinions of the CULT and ITRE Committees
• The Opinion of the Economic and Social Council of the European Union
• Opinions from the German Monopoly Commission, the Council of Regions of the European Union, the German Chamber of Commerce, several confederations of Small and Medium Enterprises, the French State Planning Commission, the French Government, several economic and legal studies ordered by the EU and many others.

The critics believe that property in software is adequately protected by copyright and that patents stifle innovation and discourage investments in software development. Their criticism is based on an ethical consensus of software developpers as well as on economic research.

The arguments of these critics have however been consistently disregarded by the proponents of the current directive proposal.

We have been waiting in vain for an answer to the following two questions^[3]:

1. What should be patentable and what not? Which of of the software patents granted by the EPO, if any, should be excluded from patentability? Please explain, citing a set of sample patent claims!
2. How is this achieved by the proposed directive? Please explain for each sample patent claim, which provisions of the directive, if any, would exclude it from patentability!

We urge you:

1. Please reject the directive as long as the two basic questions have not been answered!
2. Please reject the directive as long as it relies on abstract criteria such as "technical contribution" without clarifying how these concepts exclude some sample patent claims!
3. Please reject the directive as long as it does not reliably exclude patents on subject matter such as algorithms and business methods, whose patentability can not be shown to be in the best interests of innovation and productivity!

To let you understand better what is at stake, we have put together an outdoor performance and a conference on the subject of software patents. We could be very happy if you could come to Place du Luxembourg on Wednesday at 12:00-14:00 and to Room A1E1 at 14:00-16:00 to exchange views with software developers, scientists and concerned citizens.

Yours Sincerely,