Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2005-07-05-Speech-2-020"
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"en.20050705.6.2-020"2
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"Mr President, are computer programs patentable? The giants in the IT world, such as the US companies IBM and Microsoft, have no doubt about it. For the majority of innovative SMEs, but also for professionals linked to the software industry, such as programmers, researchers and independent developers, the patentability of computer programs will be tantamount to a death sentence. This weighty issue has shuttled back and forth between the European Parliament and the Council of Ministers for over two years now. The result of this parliamentary marathon could be the approval of a Bolkestein Directive – yet another – on the patentability of computer programs.
The European Patent Office, contrary to both the letter and the spirit of the law, has issued over 30 000 patents to projects for mathematical calculations or methods of processing or displaying data. Often, these patents are as wide-ranging, trivial and damaging as their equivalents in the USA. I believe that the patentability of computer programs must be rejected for many reasons, the main reason being that computers use languages and that the words of a language cannot be patented, as this would prevent others from using them freely. It is the specific combination of these words that is protected, a protection achieved by copyright in precisely the same way as copyright in music covers a score, not the musical notes themselves. Moreover, this is precisely the principle established by the Munich Convention.
Why revise this part of established law? Why abolish copyright? Abolishing it would make it impossible to write new computer programs. How can we imagine life in a country where a company could be granted exclusive rights just because its document contained letters in bold script and sub-titles in italics or used the progress bar, the double click or the electronic shopping basket - things that have already been patented in the USA? We must refuse the Commission and the Council this licence to kill off innovation by the small software producer."@en1
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