Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2003-09-23-Speech-2-034"
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"en.20030923.2.2-034"2
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"Mr President, ladies and gentlemen, I must admit that, of the many subjects dealt with in this term, the subject that we are dealing with this morning has, for me, been one of the most complex, and I must acknowledge the enormous amount of work that Mrs McCarthy has carried out.
I do not have all the answers and I understand the Commission’s need - as Commissioner Bolkestein explained clearly - to speak on this issue. I will, nevertheless, make a few remarks of a general nature, starting with the premise that we are dealing with an issue where identifying the subject of legal protection, and thus converting computer terms into legal terms and concepts, can already, in itself, be an extremely complex matter.
Now to a second point: we have, of necessity, to deal with a complex international legislative framework and, if we look at what is happening, not just in Europe but in the United States, in particular, the patent system is proving to have very many limitations, above all very many practical limitations. Having said that, I believe that this directive, although there is room for improvement, has addressed a serious political issue facing the European Union. We need to stand apart from the US positions and we may well also have to convince our main economic partners of the need for a measure harmonising all aspects of the legal protection of software in a form different from the current form. In this, we are not starting from scratch, because the characteristics on which patents are based have already been clearly identified in the TRIPs agreements. We therefore need to insist on the idea - from which we must not be moved - that software patents are only granted on solid grounds. We have seen an abnormal number of applications for software patents in the United States, and there are probably just as many in the EU, and this makes it clear that we are not dealing with genuine inventive activity and that we cannot afford to grant every type of application a patent. Furthermore, with the number of patent applications increasing uncontrollably, it will become virtually impossible to ascertain properly from the archives whether the application will genuinely lead to a new invention.
Of course, there are some legal aspects that could be improved upon; there are some discrepancies with Directive 91/250/EEC; we could certainly have reflected more from a legal point of view on Article 52 of the European Patent Convention, because one thing is certain: we will be forced to return to this issue because - as many Members have stated - development is so rapid that the European Union will have to adopt a measure in the next few years, when we will be able to revise our positions."@en1
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