US-style software patent law rejected by Europe
The parliament in Strasbourg, France, yesterday voted 648 to 14 to throw out a draft law protecting inventions that combine software and machinery, such as code that reduces battery consumption on mobile phones.
The assembly opposed US-style limits on public use of software and ruled out a compromise with EU governments which endorsed the law in March.
“We buried a bad law and did so without flowers,” said Eva Lichtenberger, an Austrian member of the parliament’s Green group.
“The legislation would have hindered the development of small companies and helped big businesses because they are the only ones that can afford patent lawyers and litigation costs,” she said.
EU governments were counting on the legislation to encourage investment by creating a single framework for these kinds of patents.
A lack of uniform rules in the 25-nation bloc means European companies like Ericsson AB, the world’s biggest maker of wireless networks, and SAP AG, the No 1 business-management software maker, trail US businesses such as International Business Machines Corp in patenting software.
The defeat is “a missed opportunity”, said Mark MacGann, director general of the European Information, Communications and Consumer Electronics Technology Industry Association, which represents companies including Nokia, Siemens, SAP and Ericsson.
“Harmonisation would have been an optimal solution,” he said.
Advocates of so-called open-source software, such as the Linux operating system, had lobbied the parliament to restrict software patents because of concerns the EU would follow the US approach, which gives patent protection to software and ideas such as internet pop-up advertising.
Patents can leave open- source developers and users vulnerable to infringement claims for inadvertently distributing patented methods.
Unlike copyright, patents give holders exclusive rights to a technology for a set number of years. Patent holders can charge a license fee for their invention and restrict who uses it.
Companies are increasingly seeking this protection for computer- driven inventions, which account for about a fifth of patent applications in Europe.
“There is important innovation coming out of the software industry,” Steve Ballmer, chief executive of Microsoft Corp, the world’s largest software maker, said in Paris yesterday before the parliament vote.
“We think that innovation needs to be protected.”
The European Commission proposed legislation on the patenting of “computer-implemented inventions” in 2002 to chip away at disparate national patent enforcement rules and reduce the regulatory burden on Europe’s technology industry.
The rejection emboldens a group of policymakers in Europe who are spearheading resistance to EU market-opening proposals and championing the rights of national regulators, workers and companies.
