Ladies and Gentlemen It is a great pleasure and honor for me to be able to speak to you here in the name of the European Software Industry about the dangers of software patentability, as they are perceived by those software companies and computer professionals who have been confronted with the subject. You may already know that more than 400 software companies and 125000 individuals support the Eurolinux Petition for a Software Patent Free Europe. You can find the text of this petition in appendix X of the documentation on your table. This petition is addressed to the European Parliament. Let me quote: Among the 125000 individuals who support this appeal are thousands of top executives of all kinds of small, medium and large software and hardware companies and thousands of software developpers from companies such as SAP, Siemens and IBM. This petition is considered by web poll experts to be the largest of all online petitions so far. A manager of a large specialised petition website recently asked me: Why is your petition so successful? How can such an obscure subject attract so many people? The explanation is quite simple: Software Patents run counter to the basic ethical consensus of all programmers. Programmers are generally happy with software copyright. Just as people who write music or textbooks are happy with copyright. Ms McCarthy, your position paper on the software patentability directive certainly contains some clever rhetorical devices. E.g. when you say: you are not saying but implying that the Eurolinux position is supported only by a vociferous few, while "many" think like the European Patent Office. Also, you shift the burden of proof onto us by confusing law with caselaw. You have then again restricted our opportunity of shouldering this burden by arranging a hearing upon very short notice with very limited speaking time and an agenda of misleading questions, after a long interval in which you kept stricly silent and ignored all criticism. In a way you have found a clever method of political writing and maneuvering. When your agenda runs counter to the ethical consensus of all software creators, you may have to resort to such clever methods. But what would you do if we had a patent on this method? E.g. a claim, reading: Ms McCarthy, you have certainly been infringing on this claim. OK, this minoritisation patent claim may be invalid due to lack of novelty. Also, it might be invalid due to lack of technical character, whatever that may mean. But in the eyes of a programmer, the typical software patent claims are even more abstract and simple than this "minoritisation patent". The typical software patents is just as untechnical as this "minoritisation patent", i.e. as unrelated to the art of harnessing the laws of nature. You are excluded from a more or less broad range of activities for 20 years. Imagine our "minoritisation patent" was valid, alongside with thousands of other petty patents on political strategems. What would you do? Join the political party with the largest patent portfolio and the strongest patent department? Give up your profession and become a patent salesman yourself? Or fight for your general freedom of action, for your freedom of speech and for your property in your copyrighted texts? Argue that patents on rhetorical devices and political schemes are not helpful in promoting progress? Conducting economic studies to support your arguments? That is exactly what is happening in the area of software patents. Everybody who knows what software is knows that software patents are just a silly idea. Yet the former silly idea has now become a silly reality, and recently there has been an explosion of studies of this reality. All these studies say in unisono that software patents are harmful. Even those studies written by the patent lobby (e.g. Mr. Hart and friends for the European Commission) cannot avoid this conclusion. Please take a look at Appendix X, where you find a list of brief descriptions of some of these studies. The European Patent Office has already granted more than 30000 software patents against the letter and spirit of the written law. We have presented some of them in Appendix X as a "Horror Gallery of European Software Patents". However all 30000 are horror patents. I don't know of any exceptions. They either offend the ethical consensus of programmers by blocking software development and software interoperability, or they are useless pieces of paper used by large companies in order to artificially boost their stock market value or play games of tax evasion. In no case has any european promoter of software patents ever been able to cite a single example of what he would call a "good software patent". In a way, even the promoters of software patents are not interested in protecting intellectual property. They are only interested in being able to go on playing the game, in which they have become proficient. And that is a degenerate formalistic game which destroys more intellectual property than it creates. Ladies and Gentlemen, the European Software Industry is asking that its arguments be weighed on an equal footing with the arguments of the patent industry. I may also note that UNICE and EICTA, who are represented here, are opting for the patent industry without any legitimation by their member base. In fact we have some of their members sitting here ready to tell you about how the member base was cheated, if you are interested in hearing. Probably however it will suffice if you listen to the arguments of the patent lawyers who are speaking for UNICE and EICTA and ask whether they are protecting real-life intellectual property or playing a formalistic game. It may also be telling to know that some very large industry representation bodies have taken positions which are diametrically opposed to those of UNICE and EICTA. I may mention the German Chamber of Commerce, the Dutch IT Industry Association, the French, Danish and Spanish Associations of IT professionals, the German Monopoly Commission, the European Social Committee. Others have taken neutral positions. Some large associations and renowned companies have recently signed a detailed Call for Action, which you find in Appendix X. We ask you to reject the directive and work out a specification of deliverables and a series of conformance tests for a new directive, and for its implementation by the member states. We have also provided a reference implementation, which you find in Appendix Y. That is a counter-proposal to the European Commission's proposal, provided in the form of a tabular comparison. This counter-proposal would be a sane, legally correct and macro-economically beneficial alternative version, and by reading the tabular comparison, you can find out the many inconsistencies and minoritisation patent infringements which are present in the European Commission's proposal. If you have any questions, feel free to ask us now, to contact us later, to come to our de-briefing session in room XXXX at 19:00 and of course to come to the hearing on 2002-11-26, conducted by ...., where there is more time for the speakers to discuss the real issues.