Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2003-09-23-Speech-2-026"
| Predicate | Value (sorted: default) |
|---|---|
| rdf:type | |
| dcterms:Date | |
| dcterms:Is Part Of | |
| dcterms:Language | |
| lpv:document identification number |
"en.20030923.2.2-026"2
|
| lpv:hasSubsequent | |
| lpv:speaker | |
| lpv:spokenAs | |
| lpv:translated text |
"Mr President, Mrs McCarthy, ladies and gentlemen, I would like to start by expressing my warm thanks to the rapporteur for her excellent work on this report. Mrs McCarthy, you had to overcome two major problems not usually faced by rapporteurs. Firstly, this is a highly complex topic, involving both legal issues and complicated technical matters. Secondly, you also had to deal with a sometimes very aggressive, but sometimes also very irrational lobby, yet you ultimately managed to establish an ongoing dialogue, even though you undoubtedly found this difficult at times, as the rest of us did occasionally as well.
No, ladies and gentlemen, we do not want any general patenting of any software. We do not want to strengthen the market power and monopolies of the software giants. No, we do not want to threaten the commercial bases of small and medium-sized software companies. And no, we do not want to undermine the successful open source community and Linux technology in any way. So what do we want? We want to make a sensible distinction between computer-implemented technical inventions, on the one hand – which must of course be patentable – and pure software for ordinary data processing, which should not be patentable, on the other.
It is true that in the past, the European Patent Office has handed out far too many patents far too lightly. Mrs McCarthy has cited the most recent example of Amazon’s 'one-click' shopping method. However, only the legislator can bring this harmful trend to a halt. It makes no sense whatsoever to be opposed to this directive, because then these practices will simply continue. I am therefore at a loss to understand how anyone – especially the open source community – can be opposed to any form of directive in this area, as this would simply allow the current practice, which this community views very critically, to continue.
On the other hand, it is also true that an invention, in the classical sense, deserves to be protected by legislation. The inventor has invested time and money in his invention, and it is of course quite unacceptable for the state to stand and watch while others exploit his ideas commercially. In this area, the issue of the European Union’s competitiveness must therefore also be discussed, for if we go so far in our directive that virtually every software element results in an invention no longer being patentable, we will be at a major disadvantage in the global competition for innovation. We should be aware of this.
The proposal by the Committee on Legal Affairs and the Internal Market improves the directive on key points. It limits the tendency to issue patents too casually, which has been criticised here, and it does so more effectively than the Commission’s original proposal. The new Article 4A, with its negative examples, creates watertight protection against the patenting of software, because we are saying quite clearly that pure software cannot be patented, business methods cannot be patented, and algorithms and data processing cannot be patented either.
What we need is a European patent law to promote innovation, one that contains clear and sensible rules and draws a watertight border against pure software. This directive achieves these goals."@en1
|
Named graphs describing this resource:
The resource appears as object in 2 triples