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European Commission Reverses its Views on Patents

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the maybe-not dept.

prostoalex writes "ZDNet UK News reports "The European Commission said last week that computer programs will be excluded from patentability in the upcoming Community Patent legislation, and that the European Patent Office (EPO) will be bound by this law". Politician Adam Gierek posted a question to European Commission asking the institution to clarify its standings on software patents."

2 of 181 comments (clear)

  1. Contrarian view by xkr · · Score: 5, Insightful
    It used to be that inventions were made out of motors, belts, pulleys, and such. Consider the cotton gin, or the sewing machine. Now, inventions are made with computer programs, web interfaces, java beans, relational databases, flash. The real tests (used to be): is it novel? It is useful? More than ever, those hundred-year-old requirements still make perfect sense. Patenting the obvious is just as bad an idea now as it ever was.

    In the heyday of railroads, new patents were being issued every few hours on improvements in track shape and airbrakes. The parts of the patent system that are broken, or badly in need of a tune-up, are not related to computer programs, they are related to issues of proper review, rational litigation, and what should be public disclosure of licensing, and mandatory licensing.

    Patent law actually requires "fair licensing." After all, the whole point of patents was to get inventions INTO the public domain, not to promote monopolies. Its just that courts have long since given up trying to assess fair licensing, so we have forgotten that half of the original formula.

    --
    I will create a sig when innovation restarts in the U.S.
  2. Re:Pressure? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    The EU software industry consists mostly of smaller companies that would be hurt by allowing for software patents. Only companies such as Microsoft, Nokia and Siemens were lobbying pro-patent as far as I recall. It might just be the EU Commision have learned to ignore the Irish commisioner, who is heavily pro-Microsoft due to the company's presence in his country.