Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2005-07-05-Speech-2-013"
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"en.20050705.6.2-013"2
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".
Mr President, Commissioner, ladies and gentlemen, it is most important in tomorrow’s vote to ensure that the Council common position which broadens the scope for the patentability of software does not pass through Parliament without amendments.
There has been an extraordinarily large number of problems with this proposal. The Commission and the Council have taken no account whatsoever of the amendments to the proposal for a directive that a majority in Parliament tabled at first reading. The most glaring example of this can be found on the Commission’s Scadplus website. To quote directly from there: ‘the Council's common position of May 2004 did not retain any of the substantive amendments introduced by the EP’. Parliament was therefore bypassed with a shrug of the shoulders. This is not the right way to proceed, neither here nor in any other matters relating to the codecision procedure.
I hope that a majority in Parliament will support the reasonable amendments made to the Council common position, and which render the requirements for the patentability of software more stringent than they are now. It is most important to prevent the granting of what are purely software and business designs in Europe. To some extent, current practice at the European Patent Office has drifted too far into a grey area, with patents being granted on flimsy grounds.
The scope for the patentability of software in Europe should not be broadened further. On the other hand, the majority of present-day technological products make use of software and patents granted for a technological product should not be rejected simply because the software forms a component of it. It is also important, however, to ensure that patents cannot be used to hinder the creation of compatible software. It is good that we share the Commission’s opinion on this.
The directive should support European innovative research and product development in the software sector. This means that unnecessary barriers to open source software development should not be erected, nevertheless taking into account the fact that patents are crucially important to many European companies. Academic research, both here and around the world, has shown, however, that research and development input is not dependent on patents or geography. Businesses should carry out software development where the best environment for innovation is available, regardless of the extent of patent protection in a geographical region. Nothing indicates that this patentable software has to be produced in Europe: it can be produced perfectly well in India, China or elsewhere in the world and then patented somewhere else.
The aim of the directive is to harmonise the way software patents are registered at the European Patent Office and in Member States, when they are granted. For that reason, I am in favour of the directive becoming law. The common problems associated with the patent systems, slowness, high cost, and so on, are not relevant to this debate, but it has now become obvious that there is a need for Community patents. A European Community patent should be speedily drafted.
I think it is likely that the amendments that Parliament adopts tomorrow will lead us to conciliation. I would like to remind everyone that if Parliament is not satisfied with the outcome of conciliation it can always reject the entire proposal even after conciliation. On no account should a bad directive be allowed to get through."@en1
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