Brussels, 19/10/2000 (Agence Europe) - The European Commission is giving itself further time to consider the situation before defining its policy on the patentability of computer software. On Thursday, it began further consultations over the Internet and is calling for comments from industry, the public at large and Member States, by 1 September.
A broad debate has recently started up in Europe on the patentability of computer software, the Commission explains in a press release. Some, including UNICE (European employers), the EICTA (European Information and Communications Technologies Association) or large companies like Microsoft, consider that patents in this field will stimulate innovation, encouraging major investment of financial and material resources required for developing sophisticated and specialised software. Others, including many small and medium-sized companies and free software producers like Linux, consider on the other hand that patents strangle fair competition and hamper innovation. Within the European Commission, opinions differ between the services of Commissioner Bolkestein, in charge of the Internal Market, and Commissioner Liikanen, responsible for the information society (see EUROPE of 23 September, p.16). The aim of consultation is to help the Commission to find a "balance" between the promotion of innovation and the safeguarding of adequate competition on the market.
The Commission has already affirmed that it considers it necessary to harmonise national legislation on patents in the field of computer programmes to lift the current legal uncertainties. Computer programmes as such are excluded from patentahility in the Munich convention on European patents, signed by all the European Union Member States. However, "thousands of patents for technical inventions using a computer programme have been granted by national patent offices and by the European Patent Office (EPO). Furthermore, while the national and EPO provisions setting out the conditions for granting such patents are similar, their application in practice varies considerably", explains the Commission in the consultation document established by the services of the Internal Market Directorate General. Changes in the Munich Convention are considered, and the removal of the computer programmes from the list of elements only being the object of patents could be decided during a intergovernmental conference, in Munich in November 2000. Though for the Commission, "only Community legislation will be able to restrain to the right level in Europe the conditions for patenting inventions implemented by the Internet". It prepared a draft Directive ion the issue (which should have already been presented in July, at the same time as its draft on the creation of a Community patent). The consultation document is available on the Commission's Europa web site: http: //europa.eu.int/comm/internal_market/en/intprop/indprop/index.htm