Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2005-07-05-Speech-2-015"
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"en.20050705.6.2-015"2
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".
Mr President, Commission, ladies and gentlemen, I would like to express my gratitude to all of you, particularly Mr Rocard and Mr McCarthy, who have performed a small miracle with this directive – one that has caused so much tension and in respect of which a number of currents can be discerned that represent the different opinions in this House.
The key aim of this directive is to put a stop to the trickle of trivial patents through the European Patent Office in Munich in recent years, including for pure software that can apparently be patented. I have understood, and we are all agreed on this, that this directive’s common goal is to render this impossible. In principle therefore, this directive aims to improve and shore up Article 52 of the Munich Convention.
Being a lawyer, I went and looked up the relevant article. Legislation could not be expressed any more clearly than in Article 52 of the Munich Convention. Although this article is worded in very simple terms, it has, unfortunately, been interpreted incorrectly, or at least differently, in every Member State, and the result of that has been enormous legal uncertainty.
It is crucial to put a stop to trivial patents, because we have to protect and reinforce innovation and research, and with it competition and employment, within Europe. If there are no rewards, nobody will invent anything, and so I believe that a fair reward scheme should be introduced for inventors, and that they should be able to protect their ideas, their intellectual property. If not, I fear that, after labour-intensive production, which is already leaving for China, a huge number of corporate research and development departments will follow suit, particularly the multinationals, followed by the small and medium-sized enterprises. If that happens, then I think that we will live to regret the fact that it is so difficult to draft legislation in Europe, that we display a desperate lack of decisiveness and that we do not have the nerve to draft legislation which would strengthen our competitiveness globally. I think that it is regrettable for our children, as well as future generations, if we do not dare go ahead. I therefore hope that a strong directive will be drafted, and that seems to be the case.
What is the biggest problem? The biggest problem is that this House, the Commission and the Council have no democratic control over the European Patent Office, and that is what we want. That is why we Liberals have tabled Amendment 65, in which we ask for the whole of this directive to be rejected and ask the Commission to come forward with a European Community patent, so that this House can monitor the European Patent Office, which will then fall within the scope of European rules, and I think that we would have legal instruments and a legal organisation at our disposal. We would then be able to put harmonised legal procedures in place and shed light on the whole issue, which would mainly benefit the medium- and small-sized enterprises.
At the moment, if a small business wants to take legal action because of a patent infringement, it will cost them millions, which a small business can never afford. I hope that we as the Group of the Alliance of Liberals and Democrats for Europe reach a well-considered position, but I also hope that the entire directive will be voted out tomorrow so that the Commission can table a sound and well-founded proposal for a European patent that is incorporated in a directive such as this one, so that we can avail ourselves of a harmonised and well-considered directive."@en1
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