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123webguru News Desk
Showdown looms over patenting bill
By Huw Jones
BRUSSELS (Reuters) - EU lawmakers are heading for a showdown over new rules on patenting inventions as a key vote next week may struggle to find a consensus, an outcome seen favoring big software developers.
Member states and the European Parliament are looking at a bill on patenting inventions that use software. The legislature's legal affairs committee is due to debate the bill on Monday and vote on Tuesday.
"It's not like a budget where you can cut the pie in two. Either you allow patenting or you do not. It's a political decision," Laurence van de Walle, who advises the Greens on the bill, said on Friday.
The bill's sponsor, French socialist Michel Rocard, has pleased people who want minimal patenting, but liberal and center right parties want a broader scope.
A source in the center-right EPP party bloc, which is the largest grouping on the legal affairs committee, said on Friday that Rocard's version of the legislation is "still largely unacceptable."
Rocard, a former Prime Minister of France, was not immediately available for comment.
Lawmakers have come under intense lobbying, reflecting a politically-charged faultline in the world's software industry.
Those who support open-source or free software say copyrighting is preferable to patenting, and welcome Rocard's stance, saying it will allow developers to enter markets that would otherwise be sealed by patents.
Rocard wants a narrow approach to patenting, to effectively include only "programmable apparatus" or hardware applications such as an ABS braking system or a machine to pump insulin.
But the member state version opted for a broad approach to patenting software-related innovations, pleasing large companies such as Nokia and Microsoft which say this will stop copycat devices from countries like China.
EICTA, which represents 51 major multinational companies, said on Friday that lawmakers should reject Rocard's proposals and back what the member states have agreed.
The Greens back Rocard, but said the vote looked tight. "I am not optimistic. It's a dossier where you don't have a middle way," van de Walle said.
"But we have seen many cases where the result of the vote in the legal affairs committee was demolished in plenary," she said, adding that the Greens were trying to switch the vote back to its original slot on Monday.
Full parliament is due to vote on the bill next month.
WHAT'S IN A NAME?
In his latest version of the bill, Rocard has proposed changing the name of the directive to patentability of 'computer controlled invention' from 'computer implemented inventions'.
"The scope of the directive is thus the one of the patenting of hardware devices that use software in order to control this hardware," Rocard says in his report seen by Reuters.
EICTA said changing the title would alter the scope of the rules and leaves the computer outside the invention, which the group says does not represent reality.
Crucial flashpoints among lawmakers remain how to define 'technical contribution', a key criteria for patenting, and whether data processing should be excluded.
Only a simple majority is needed to adopt the bill in committee, but a qualified majority would be needed in the full parliament, a tricky feat if there is no consensus.
The fear among some MEPs that if the bill fails to get a qualified majority then the member state version of the bill would go ahead unchanged, pleasing big industry players.
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