EICTA and Software Patents

Recently, EICTA lobbyists in Brussels have said to several MEPs that they have made a poll which shows that 97% of the software companies want patents. The basis for this is a poll made by Bitkom which in fact says that 52% of the respondents said that they wanted to "preserve the status quo or reduce patentability". We have not yet found out how the enquete was made, but it is clear that at Bitkom the patent question is in the hands of IBM's patent lawyer Fritz Teufel, and it is likely that these 52% were from a population of corporate lawyers. Hardly a basis for EICTA's lobbying.

http://kwiki.ffii.de/Eicat031127En
EICTA
Bitkom: Voice of IT corporate patent lawyers in Germany: The German Information and Telecomunication Industry Association Bitkom, one of the influential members of the European EICTA.org, began in 2001 to get involved in questions of patent policy. The activity was conducted in a closed circle of patent lawyers, dominated by IBM's european patent deparment head Fritz Teufel. This circle published a first statement in support of the CEC/BSA directive proposal in spring 2002 after adoption by the meeting between 7 patent lawyers of large corporations, held by the IP workgroup under the presidence of Teufel. This workgroup later published a survey which tries to demonstrate that the software industry wants patents. This survey was used for supporting talks with politicians for many month before the survey was finally published, after we had reported about it. The survey does not show what its authors claim it shows.
CALIU 2003-02: Sobre la posición de EICTA: Refutal of EICTA's patent credo by Xavier Drudis Ferran from CALIU.org at the demand of a Spanish Senator after a hearing in the Spanish Senate, for which EICTA had submitted this paper.
Eicta & Agoria Representativity: This AelWiki page argues that EICTA and Agoria mainly represent large US companies.
Europarl Hearings 2002-11-07 and 26: Here, patent attorney Harald Hagedorn from SAP, a big loser of the patent game, spoke for EICTA, saying that all mature industries need patents and so does the software industry, and of course it also needs program claims. Hagedorn also misrepresented studies of the German government as supporting this assertion. EICTA is probably sending Hagedorn to such occasions, because SAP, although a loser, is one of the few European companies in the game.


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