The arguments on both sides are many and complex, but there is a clear conflict of interest in asking patent lawyers whether the extension is a good idea or not; after all, processing these applications is their livelihood but it is society that has to face the consequences, and costs. In particular, small to medium sized enterprises (SMEs) have voiced the greatest concern over patent processing costs and resolving litigation problems.
Last year, the European parliament voted against the Computer Implemented Inventions (CII) directive, which brought a halt to the commission’s plans on harmonization. At the beginning of this year, Charlie McCreevy, the European commissioner for internal markets and services, decided to have one last try in his term of office to resolve the matter, by inviting views on the question, to be followed by a public hearing.
The general question of whether patents can be legalized in one EU state, and be automatically valid across the whole EU has so far received a negative response by both patent lawyers (who see the move as reducing the need for their service) and the anti-software patent lobby (who believe this would pave the way to enforcing software patents more easily), and so two common enemies unite on this particular skirmish.
There is also the issue of differences in national application rules and standards resulting in unequal values of granted patents, as well as the vexed question of language. While many see the use of just English as quite sensible, there are enough dissenters to create a major obstacle.
A breakdown by stakeholder of the largest responses to Mr McCreevy’s questionnaire is: 40% from companies, 24% from the open source and software development community, 13% from patent practitioners, and 9% from citizens. The greatest number of responses by state was from Germany, twice as large as the next nearest, Italy, with the UK a third of the Italian number. In all a little over 2,500 views were submitted.
Given the complexity of the issues involved, it is unlikely any easy consensus will be reached. There is also the substantial matter of the quality of the process for vetting applications; this has been the single most damning issue faced by the US Patent and Trademark Office, a pioneer of software patents, with dubious software patents being granted leading to considerable strife for litigants. This has led to concern that such a repetition in the EU would harm business.
Source: OpinionWire by Butler Group (www.butlergroup.com)
