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Nokia 2004-04-04 Call for Action
Commemorate Banana Union Day

Nokia's Patent Department is collecting signatures from CTOs for this letter in support the "working document" of the EU Council "Working Party on Intellectual Property", a group of patent administrators who run the European Patent Office. The letter portrays this document as a "balanced compromise" which "takes the Parliament's concerns into account" and says that this is needed in order to assure that electric household applicances, medical technology etc do not become unpatentable. Thereby the letter drafters deceive both their signatories (CTOs who usually do not read the directive proposals) as well as their readers.
  1. The Text
  2. Annotated Links

1. The Text

CALL FOR ACTION

Proposed Directive on Patentability of Computer-Implemented Inventions
Joint Statement

As some of Europe's most innovative technology companies, we call upon ministers at the May Competitiveness Council to adopt a Common Position on the proposed EU directive on the patentability of computer-implemented inventions. The 17 March 2004 Consolidated text proposed by the Irish Council Presidency deserves the support of all Ministers in the Competitiveness Council.

We commend the Irish Presidency for presenting a balanced text which preserves the incentives for European innovation in sectors as diverse as telecommunications, information technology, consumer electronics, household appliances, transportation and medical instruments while responding to the European Parliament's call for limitations to ensure that patentability does not extend into non-technical areas or unduly hinder interoperability in our increasingly networked society.

Failure to adopt a balanced Common Position as proposed by the Irish Presidency in March 2004 will undermine innovation in Europe. Broad-based exclusions for data processing technologies, information handling, or techniques used for the so-called "conversion of conventions" would make very many patents already granted in Europe unenforceable. This would undermine licence agreements we have with other companies, many of whom are based outside the European Union in jurisdictions where computer-implemented inventions will remain patentable, shifting the balance away from European companies, making our businesses more risky, and reducing the potential for return on investment from royalty revenues which currently flow to European companies and which help fund continuing research and development activities.

All of Europe's innovators, including individual inventors, small and medium size enterprises (SMEs), as well as large multinational companies, require patents to protect their inventions, provide incentives to undertake research and development in Europe, and to promote licensing and technology transfer.

Your action is required to safeguard innovation in Europe, so that society may continue to benefit from technology advances in products as diverse as mobile telephones and cars which increasingly rely on computer-implemented inventions and to avoid jeopardising the ambitious Lisbon goal of making Europe the "most competitive and dynamic knowledge based economy" by 2010.

COMPANY LOGOS (and CTO signatures)

2. Annotated Links

->Council Working Party "compromises" on unlimited patentability and unfettered patent enforcement
In the Council of Ministers of the European Union, national patent administration officials have, after several months of secret negotiations about the proposed EU software patent directive, have reached the end of several months of secret negotiations about textual questions. The resulting "compromise document" rejects all clarifying amendments made by the European Parliament and instead pushes for direct patentability of computer programs, data structures and process descriptions. A last minute attempt by the Luxemburg delegation to allow interoperation with patented standards was rejected. Many other delegations have expressed reservations about the document, which are inserted as anonymised footnotes. Yet the Irish Council presidency wants the ministers to jointly adopt this text at the "Competitivity Council" meeting on May 17-18.
->http://kwiki.ffii.org/Cecms031107En
->Unice/Eicta/ICC etc 2003/05/22: "Joint Statement of the Industry" for Software Patents
In a "Joint Statement of the Industry", directed to the Members of the European Parliament (MEPs), the presidents of various industry associations, including Graham Taylor from the "Open Forum Europe" as a representative of the Linux/Opensource world, asks the legislators to ensure
  1. that computer programs are treated as patentable inventions and
  2. programs are directly claimable, so that programmers can be sued for publishing a program.
Moreover, as means of "protecting opensource software", the signatories ask the European Parliament to ensure that
  1. whenever an interface is patented, interoperable software may not be published or used without a license
  2. business methods are patentable "only" to the extent that a computer or some other device is involved
  3. the European Commission shall publish more papers (obituaries?) about the effects of patents on SMEs.
This statement was sent to many MEPs, together with accompanying letters from the patent arms of national industry associations. Traditionally industry associations have left patent politics completely to corporate patent lawyers, who typically form each association's "industrial property committee". This committee's papers are usually signed by the president of the association without further consultation of other committees. Gentle doublespeak with an ungentle insider meaning, as explained above, is also part of the game. What is unusual about the current letter is that an apparent "opensource community leader" was enlisted for the maneuver.
->Calls for Action
Make sure that calls for action are supported by key actors.
[ Reactions to the EU Parliament's Vote of 2003/09/24 | Tauss & Kelber 2003-09-24: EP erklärt Trivialpatenten eine Absage | DE Justice Ministry 03-09-26: Only ABS Inventions, not Software as Such | AIPLA 2003-10: Europarl Making Software Unpatentable! | Nokia 2004-04-04 Call for Action ]
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© 2005/01/10 (2004/04/04) Workgroup
english version 2004/08/16 by Hartmut PILCH