Here's a report from a breakfast meeting I was at yesterday on the
topic of SMEs and
the Community
Patent. There were 50 seats, all full. The speakers included
representatives from the Commission, the Parliament, and the
Slovenian EU Presidency.
The most interesting part was the speech by a Director of the
European Commission. She talked about its possible adoption, the
motivations, translations, and she responded to my question about
software patents. (Each topic has a section title if you want to
skip some parts.)
Possible adoption
About the possible adoption of this proposal, she talked about this
being one final attempt. The question of how realistic this
proposal is is an important one since the EC have been making
proposals on this since 1962 without success. She said that only
one country is still openly opposed to the current proposal: Spain.
France is not supporting the proposal, but that's only because
they're not willing to start an open conflict with Spain. So if
Spain can be convinced to change their position, then agreement
could be possible quite soon. Me, I hope Spain continues to block
this until all the problems are fixed.
Motivations
On motivations, she gave an example of an unnamed large European
tyre manufacturer. I'll paraphrase slightly. This manufacturer
applied for patents in it's core markets which were the UK, Italy,
France, and Germany. Then they heard that a shipment of tyres was
to arrive in Antwerp and that those tyres used the patented idea.
The European tyre manufacturer phoned the Belgian authorities and
asked them to stop the shipment in Antwerp, but the Belgian
authorities refused. The allegedly infringed patent didn't exist in
Belgium. It only existed in the UK, Italy, France, and Germany.
The arrival of the tyres in Belgium might not be a big problem
(given that Belgium isn't a core market for them), but because the
EU has reduced borders, these tyres could easily be transported into
the UK, Italy, France, or Germany.
I don't have a position on the patentability of tyres, but this
example is interesting because it's quite easy to understand. When
we're making proposals for how to avoid harming software developers,
we have to keep in mind what the possible legitimate goals of the
legislation are. That allows us to make proposals that face less
resistance.
Another interesting point is that when telling the tyre story, she
kept referring to this as "counterfeiting". I'm not sure
if that was just an accidental wrong choice of word or if this is a
hint at a plan to link the ideas of patent infringement and
counterfeiting, or even a plan to broaden the definition of
"counterfeiting".
Translations
On translations, she said most countries were now satisfied with the
proposal to have patents only in English, French, and German.
Unofficial automated translations would be provided in the other
languages of the EU. She acknowledge the general low quality of
automated translations but said that the EPO had now developed some
amazing new software for automated translations.
This made me think of a comment about ODF and OOXML compatibility:
To sway votes, it doesn't have to be technically possible, it
just has to be politically possible. Heh.
Software patents question
At question time, I asked: When I talk to SMEs in the field of
software, they say they want fewer or no software patents. We have
to remember that every patent is a regulation. Every patent is
bureaucracy. The software patents that exist today, although
dubiously legal, are making product development difficult. They are
particularly problematic when they block the use of a standard, thus
prevent others from writing useful software. Wouldn't a faster,
cheaper system worsen the current problem in those fields?
Of the six questions asked, the moderator picked this question out
as the most interesting. He was an MEP, so it was nice to see this
issue still touches a nerve - even moreso because he was a pro-swpat
MEP (or was in 2005 at least).
The Commission speaker's reply was that the Community Patent doesn't
aim to encourage more patents, weaker patents, or an increase of
wrongly-granted patents - but she didn't explain how it wouldn't.
She did say that being EU-wide, it would be easier to overturn
wrongly-granted patents since they would only have to be overturned
once instead of in every Member State. She also said that by making
the granting process faster, the period of uncertainty would be
reduced.
Those two points are not wrong, but they're help is not so great,
and they definitely wouldn't cancel out the problems caused by the
increased number of patents (which is inevitable if the process is
faster, cheaper).
When talking about software patents, she constantly called them
"wrongly granted" patents or "disguised software
patents". This is consistent with the European Commission's
position that software patents are not valid, but "computer
implemented inventions" are valid. In reality, the latter is
just a vague term which includes software patents. The European
Commission's use these funny terms and definitions makes meaningful
dialogue difficult.
Asking a question won't have an immediate effect. Commission and
Parliament speakers are ready for these questions. The point is
that they have to be reminded constantly that we're still here, the
problem is still here, and we still want a solution. If you're at
such a meeting and no one else raises the issue of software patents
or free software, you have to ask a question. It's
also good practice. Asking questions is the best way to get good at
asking good questions :-)
Miscellaneous
Aside from the above points, she mentioned in passing that
the London
Protocol had made progress and that France had now ratified it,
and said that she hoped this would encourage others to also ratify
it.
She also positioned the Community Patent as something that is meant
to help the little guy. She went as far to say that Big Business is
trying to stall the Community Patent behind the scenes - saying that
Big Business doesn't want SMEs to have access to the patent system.
She said the European Commission isn't changing the Community Patent
in ways Big Business is asking for - "Big Business can take
care of itself". This sort of talk is to be expected, given
that it was an SME breakfast, but I thought it was interesting to
note that this is how they're promoting it.
There was no mention of the issue of having a central court, and
how impartial the judges would be, and how
to avoid the EPO (the executive power) having power over the court (the judicial
power). Maintaining this separation of powers is important.
Well, without getting too long, that's the summary of my notes.
Probably the best way to ask questions would be to raise them
on FSFE's
discussion mailing list. And there's more information about
software
patents FSFE's
Software Patents page.
In related news, FFII published a very interesting press release on
another software patents topic yesterday:
"McCreevy
wants to legalise Software Patents via a US-EU patent
treaty".
--
Ciarán O'Riordan,
Support free software: Join FSFE's
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