[ Thanks to Fred Mobach
for this update: ]
As can be read on some _interesting_ mailinglists :
Date: Wed, 14 Mar 2001 13:54:58 +0100 From: Luuk van Dijk To: [email protected], [email protected] Reply-To: [email protected] Subject: [Patents] Dutch parliament orders govt. to FIRST arrange the obviousness and tecnicallity BEFORE allowing swpats LS. Today in a parliamentary hearing a majority of coalition and opposition party MP's instructed the dutch secretary of state of Economic affairs to - first arrange thorough obviousness and novelty tests in the patent system - define 'technicality' well - ONLY AFTER THAT allow software patents. - actively promote this view in the EU The test criteria are to be drafted by FENIT, the dutch IT branche organisation and VOSN, the dutch Open Source organisation, who, we may humbly add, got the item on the dutch political agenda in the first place. Clearly the 30.000 software patents, and their level of absurdity are on the agenda now. The hearing was, to the untrained political ear a bit absurd. First Hindriks (PvdA), Udo (VVD), van Walsem (D66) and van der Hoeven (CDA) each stated their concerns: broadly speaking that trivial patents on software and business methods were worse than no patents. Then the secretary of state hurried to state how thoroughly he agreed, followed by almost the same arguments as 3 months ago that the law was unclear which put SME's in an unfavourable position compared to large companies, followed by the wish to 'clarify the law'. All this sounded -again, to the untrained political ear- as if he thought the problem was something completely different than the MP's, namely that it was difficult for SME's to get a patent! But then finally, Hindriks 'summarized' the statements of the secretary of state by asking 'so you are going to oppose software patents until the obviousness criteria are in place' to which the secretary answered 'yes'. So apparently -- this the MP's told me afterwards -- the Secretary got the message, and Victory is Ours! The criteria already mentioned by the MP's were the ones VOSN and FENIT already agreed upon: - patent claims for software have to be accompanied by a working piece of code. (its amazing that this has to be mentioned, really) - the invention has to involve an experiment, which has to be proven by the applicant The VOSN and FENIT are currently debating further criteria and the extent to which they should be explicitly formulated. The system mentioned earlier on this list --- in which the applicant has to publish the problem he claims to have solved together with a `bounty' which is lost if someone else comes with the same solution within a short period --- is far to radical for FENIT, whereas just mentioning 'that it has to be new' in the law and giving more money to the patent bureaus is completely unsatisfactory to VOSN. Furthermore, VOSN wishes to see explicit rules which state that the mode of reasoning that goes 'software makes electrons move, therefore it is technical' is unambiguously forbidden, in other words, the clear delimitation of what is technical and what is not should put 'software as such' on the latter side. VOSN could use a little help in drafting these criteria, so members or likewise inclined with a background in law and some spare time are kindly requested to contact the VOSN's secretariat (see www.vosn.nl) Finally, VOSN is a bit worried about the conduct of the European Union's Directorate General for the Internal Market. All this national democracy is very nice of course, but European Guidelines tend to pretty much overrule it. A public letter to F.Bolkestein expressing our worries has been published by Eurolinux at http://www.eurolinux.org/news/pr0101/dgltr/ Further news in due time, Luuk van Dijk --__--__-- _______________________________________________ Patents maillist - [email protected] http://liberte.aful.org/mailman/listinfo/patents