Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2003-09-23-Speech-2-033"
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"en.20030923.2.2-033"2
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"Mr President, I would like to thank the rapporteur and the Commission for the work they have carried out in all its difficulty. The Radical Members of the Bonino List will vote in favour of the amendments seeking to restrict the margin of software patentability and will vote against the proposal as a whole if the main amendments are not adopted. Why? Because we do not believe in the need for European harmonisation, perhaps? Not at all. We support the Commissioner and the rapporteur in taking note of a situation whereby the European Patent Office has actually received thousands of applications for software patents.
In the light of such a clear violation of the spirit and letter of the European Patent Convention, what was needed, what would be needed, what is needed is clarification and confirmation that software is non-patentable. Whilst the distinction between the patentability of software as such and the patentability of software as part of a computer-implemented invention is a subtle one - which means that we are running the risk of getting into a mess - the solution is, I believe, very clear: if a piece of software is an integral part of an invention, it is this invention that is patentable and is patented, not the software. It is, however, already possible to do this through laws on computer-implemented inventions that are defined as such.
Software is excluded from patentability for a very specific reason, for the same reason that mathematic formulae are excluded, for the same reason that theorems are excluded, for the same reason that musical formulae and symphonies are excluded: these are all part of the field of ideas, of the organisation and transformation of ideas. We know that a task that can be performed by software can be transformed into countless different types of codes by countless programmers using different programming languages. This is what makes patenting software dangerous, and even more dangerous if the patent is to last for 20 years, which is a geological era in software development. Independent programmers and programmers in general would now be authorised to use a function patented in 1983, the early history of computer software. This is the danger.
I do not believe that it was necessary to venture into the realms of complex formulae to define the distinction between software as such and software as a part of computer-implemented inventions. It would have sufficed to keep computer-implemented inventions as patentable and ensure respect for the regulations excluding software from patentability, which, in any case, provides for protection by copyright.
Hence our support for the amendments, in particular those on interoperability and those on the need for natural forces if software is to be considered an invention. I also believe that we cannot adopt the proposal now because, if we do, the States will do their own thing. We must try to do the best we can here. I also believe that the involvement of hundreds of thousands of people who have all expressed their opinion on this issue individually should be seen as a democratic contribution, not an inconvenience."@en1
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