Greplaw points to this open letter to the Guardian in which Hartmut Pilch discusses Arlene McCarthy's recent Guardian article on software patents line by line.
There is also this Slashdot discussion on the McCarthy article.
Let's take a look at another one of McCarthy's points:
"If the EU does not take the step to develop its competence with regard to computer-implemented inventions, then the EPO and its board of appeal will continue to be the main arbitrators of the law. This will continue to create confusion and uncertainty and will sidestep the democratic scrutiny of the EU."
To achieve that the proposal would need to give people a way to appeal EPO decisions to the European Court of Justice. Which it doesn't.
If the opposition sinks the proposal, the EPO will continue to ignore the clear law in Article 52 of the Convention that makes software patents illegal.
And if the proposal sails through, the EPO will ignore whatever restrictions the proposal contains and grant business method patents, patents on mathematical formulas, tax law procedure and everything else. The present state of the art in the awarding of illegal patents may be easily accessed at the European Software Patent Horror Gallery.
The EPO is dominated by the patent inflation side. It would be a great idea to take away their stronghold on the application of the law.
However, the software patent directive proposal unfortunately does not contain anything that would help to do that.
As I have pointed out before: If the directive is adopted, that will change the law. But it will change nothing concerning the role of the EPO. The EPO will continue to be the "main arbitrators" of that new, changed law.
Posted by Karl-Friedrich Lenz at June 16, 2003 12:06 AM | TrackBack