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News of Intellectual Property 20.07.2005 - European Parliament sends software patent packing The European Parliament has voted against a proposed software patent directive, putting to an end a heated debate between supporters of more harmonised EU legal protection for computer-implemented inventions (CII) and those who say the current copyright regime sufficiently protects innovative European high-tech companies. The European Parliament rejected the proposed computer-implemented inventions patent directive by 648 votes to 14, with 18 abstentions. If passed, the legislation would have given software patent owners harmonised EU-wide protection for their inventions, with unified standards across the 25 Member States, say its supporters, including the Commission which originally introduced the proposal to EU lawmakers. The common position has been subjected to many months of debate in the European Council and Parliament. Big software firms put their weight behind the proposed directive, arguing that patents encourage research spending and defend European inventions from US competition. Critics of the CII patent law – led by the Open Source and Industry Alliance (OSAIA) – claim copyright law already adequately protects software inventions and that patenting would just raise the cost of innovating. A split in opinion over the directive’s text led the legislative body to err on the side of caution, and reject the common position, citing that it was not “mature for adoption”. The Commission maintains that, without the directive, patents on computerised inventions will continue being granted by national offices and the European Patent Office (EPO) with no regard for harmonisation, thus opening the way for different interpretations of the rules. Nevertheless, the EU’s executive body said it will respect the Parliament’s rejection as final. For its part, the EPO said it will continue advocating harmonised CII patenting across Europe, and explained how its patent protection for these sort of inventions differs from the US approach. “As with all inventions, CII are only patentable if they have technical character, are new and involve an inventive technical contribution to the prior art,” noted the EPO. It does not grant ‘software patents’ – computer programs per se, algorithms or computer-implemented business methods – that make no technical contribution and are, therefore, not considered patentable inventions under the European Patent Convetion. Vote for status quo The level of debate surrounding this directive reflects the importance of CII in today’s digital society. Vast sums – both private and EU through such programmes as the Information Society Technologies (IST) in the Sixth Research Framework Programme (FP6) – are pumped into new technologies in a range of fields, including healthcare, motor vehicles, aviation, and consumer electronics, which are aimed at improving European quality of life. Rejection of the EU-wide patent law for CII, it seems, does not necessarily put into question the validity of the patenting system for these types of inventions in general. Mark MacGann of the European high-tech industry association EICTA said that Parliament’s decision on 6 July was a wise one. He added that patents help European companies, large and small, sustain research investment levels by protecting the rights to the resulting inventions, but that the proposed EU law could have “narrowed the scope of patent legislation in Europe”. Parliament’s vote for the status quo, he continued, preserves the current system that has served the interest of EICTA’s 10 000 member companies (over 2 million employees) well so far. The association, set up in 1999 as the voice of the information communications technology and consumer electronics industries in Europe, said it will continue making a case for the importance of CII patents to European research, innovation and overall competitiveness. “All the European institutions and industry have worked hard and constructively on the issue of CII patents for some time. Europe’s high-tech industry will support the efforts of the European institutions to find broader improvements to the European patent system that will particularly benefit the interests of smaller companies,” noted EICTA in a statement following Parliament’s decision. All news of IP Back to main page
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