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• Weather forecast for Europe
  Umbrella-business may not have a market in Europe in the field of software if the EU software patent directive is passed with the European Parliament amendments:
  
  "Member States shall ensure that the production, handling, processing, distribution and publication of information, in whatever form, can never constitute direct or indirect infringement of a patent, even when a technical apparatus is used for that purpose."
  
  "Member states shall ensure that data processing is not considered to be a field of technology in the sense of patent law, and that innovations in the field of data processing are not considered to be inventions in the sense of patent law."
  
  Together with proper definitions of what is technical (i.e. "statutory subject matter").
  
  The european national parliaments have an uniqe chance to improve weather conditions back home if they ask the Dutch Council Presidency to withdraw the voting on the software patent directive this fall. They have good reasons to renegotiate, since the Council has ignored and rejected all the work of the European Parliament and the consultative organs of the EU without any justification.
  
  http://swpat.ffii.org/letters/cons0406/index.en.html

  August 5, 2004

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• Europe takes the lead.
  I have never before seen an article so clearly expose the failure of letting the patent system expand into the information economy.
  
  How can *nondisclosure* of patent applications promote science and the arts? How come kernel developers *abstain* from reading patent litterature?
  
  Europe must make sure not to mimic the US mistake. Just stick to the European Patent Convention: Programs for computers shall not be regarded as inventions!
  
  http://www.european-patent-office.org/legal/epc/e/ar52.html
  
  Further, the European Parliament Software Patent Directive of 2003 should be upheld:
  
  "Member states shall ensure that data processing is not considered to be a field of technology in the sense of patent law, and that innovations in the field of data processing are not considered to be inventions in the sense of patent law."
  
  "Member States shall ensure that the production, handling, processing, distribution and publication of information, in whatever form, can never constitute direct or indirect infringement of a patent, even when a technical apparatus is used for that purpose."
  
  While the US struggle with patent system reforms, Europe has already solved the problems by not introducing them. As Dr. Karl-Heinz Strassemeyer of IBM Germany said in Copenhagen in 2002:
  
  "If they want to kill themselves with lawsuits I would let them."
  
  http://www.sslug.dk/patent/strassemeyer/transr-del.shtml

  August 2, 2004

  0 replies