FFII Opposition against Amazon
2004/01/25
For immediate Release

The patent system produces broad monopolies in combination with expensive administrative and judicial procedures. It has thereby created a paradise for patent professionals, who again promote the system by claiming that it benefits the economy as a whole. This claim has always been doubted and often negated by those economists who have endeavoured to subject it to scrutiny. When granting patents, at least special caution is needed. Increasing the number of patents by extending the invention concept, as practised by the European Patent Office since the mid eighties, leads to a flood of harmful low-quality patents. Very many of the patents which the EPO has recently been granting are of similar breadth and triviality as the gift ordering patent of Amazon. Nowadays it is difficult to operate a webshop without infringing European patents. In the USA, the Federal Trade Commission has, after intensive hearings, concluded that software patents are damaging to innovation and competition. Claims to the contrary can be safely assumed to be empirically falsified. This is also the view of the European Parliament, which amended the European Commission's software patent directive proposal last September. But patent professionals are pushing governments and sectoral bodies to block the Parliament's decision. The European Patent Office is also persisting on its unfortunate path.

In the past, e.g. in the "Controlling Pension Benefits System" decision, the European Patent Office has abused opposition procedings against trivial business method patents as an opportunity to extend the limits of patentability while at the same time killing the trivial patent in question. Especially a patent such as Amazon Gift Ordering is susceptible to such manoeuvres. The opposition of GI seems to point into that direction.

By our opposition we remind the board of the context of its action. A new call Appeal signed by politicians, entrepreneurs and organisations urges the European Patent Office to immediately stop the illegal granting of software and business method patents. When the president of the European Patent Office, Dr. Ingo Kober, was asked about this during a hearing in the European Parliament, Kober referred in his published written answer to the decisions of the technical board of appeals, which were not bound to his orders. Also national governments like to duck behind the Technical Boards of Appeals of the European Patent Office (EPO). It is time that we directly contact this de-facto patent legislator. The opposition procedure offers a good opportunity.

In our opposition we only referred to the valid law in the consistent interpretation given by case law and examination guidelines of the 80s or the European Parliament Vote of 2003. In contrast to the Pension Benefits doctrine the straightforward interpretation of the law gives a secure basis for withdrawing the contested patent as well as many other monopolies on algorithms and business methods framed in terms of general-purpose computing equipment.