FFII Software Patent News 2005

The European Parliament's rapporteur Michel Rocard has published his views on the software patent directive and outlined the direction which his amendments will take. Rocard's approach seems to contain the needed ingredients for a directive that provides the needed clarifications and does what the Council claims it wants to do: exclude computer programs from patentability while allowing technical inventions (problem solutions involving controllable forces of nature) to be patented, regardless of whether their implementation runs under software control or not. Rocard proposes to replace the misleading term by "computer-implemented inventions" by "computer-controlled inventions" or "computer-aided inventions". The full report with amendments is expected soon after the debate of 21st April. JURI MEPs can submit amendments before May 6th. JURI votes on June 20th, the plenary votes on July 6th.

Today the Spanish Senate has unanimously approved a motion which was initiated by Jordi Guillot, senator and president of the Commission of the Society of the Information and Conocimiento of the Senate, which asks the Government to remain firm in his refusal to the patents of software and it should work with other member states to obtain an majority against the 18 May text.

/Brussels, 2 February 2005/ - The Legal Affairs Committee of the European Parliament (JURI) has decided with a large majority to ask the Commission for a renewed referral of the software patents directive.

IBM has officially released 500 patents for use in free/opensource software and encourages other companies to follow suit, saying that "this is just a first step". Preliminary research by FFII shows that these 500 patents have at least 100 counterparts at the EPO which are also covered by IBM's license.

A motion for a resolution, signed by 61 Members of the European Parliament (MEPs) from 13 countries, calls for a new first reading of the software patent directive. The motion has received particularly warm support from MEPs from Poland and other new member states. However, many veteran MEPs also welcome the initiative as a way out of a crisis, into which the Council has plunged the directive project by failing to conduct a proper first reading.