Dear Ben

Directive Patent law: patentability of computer-implemented inventions COM(2002)0092

Thank you very much for your letter expressing your concern on the issue of EU software patenting.

I share your concerns on this Directive. Current proposals to extend patentability to basic elements of knowledge and to mathematical operations are extremely worrying and a potential danger to a variety of sectors (such as the software industry and the education and charity sectors).

Pretending to protect inventors and their inventions, the Directive instead allows predominantly US corporations to lock up the market at the expense of the open-sourced software industry which, by more than a coincidence, is primarily a European sector.

Patenting software is as absurd as patenting a novel or a recipe. The Directive goes against the expectation of the public and stakeholders including the Economic and Social Council, the Industry committee, the Culture committee, 140,000 people and 30 leading software scientists who signed two petitions to the Parliament, as well as the 91% of the European citizens who took part in a European Commission public consultation.

The Commission admits in the preamble that the public consultation of 19 October 2000 received 91% negative answers. However it considers the position of economic key players such as the UNICE as determining. The influence of the Business Software Alliance (whose main members are Microsoft and IBM) behind the project has been widely condemned. It is interesting to note that companies that have lobbied for patenting do not necessarily produce software themselves.

If this Directive were implemented, it would conclude the transfer of our data-processing control to the US. In the wake of protests by computer scientists, economists and the Greens the vote has now been postponed and will take place between the 22-26th of September. You can be sure that the Directive will have a very bumpy ride when it goes to vote in the Parliament in late September but please keep up your pressure on other political groups in the Parliament as there are still many who support the directive. The Greens believe that copyright on software is a far more reasonable alternative, which protects a certain solution, while not preventing the development of alternative programs on a similar basis.

The Greens will continue to lobby the Parliament in this way over the voting period. Thank you again for your letter.

Yours sincerely,
Jean Lambert
Green MEP for London

Office of Jean Lambert MEP
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