Rethinking the European ICT agenda

In early September 2004, PriceWaterhouseCoopers published a report titled "Bijlage: Aanbieding rapport Rethinking the European ICT agenda" (or "Rethinking the European ICT Agenda: Ten ICT-breakthroughs for reaching Lisbon goals").

Point #5 of the report discussed software patents, focussing on the threat they pose.

Original document

• http://www.cisco.at/pdfs/publicsector/ict_agenda.pdf

(A previous URL, now broken, is: http://www.ez.nl/dsresource?objectid=62435&type=PDF )

Quotes

Here are parts of the report which know because they were quoted on websites.

From The Register

On the European ICT industry, the "current discussion on the patent on software" (represents a) "particular threat".

"The mild regime of IP protection in the past has led to a very innovative and competitive software industry with low entry barriers. A software patent, which serves to protect inventions of a non-technical nature, could kill the high innovation rate. However, opinions on software patent in its current proposed form vary a lot. Many large companies operating on a global scale, including European ones, seem to be in favour of a software patenting regime. But most small enterprises are strongly opposed.

"Only very few European companies have prepared themselves for the consequences of a software patent regime. It raises the question how the introduction of the European software patent interacts with a European strategy based on widespread use of ICT's."

Source: The Register: PwC: software patents threat to Europe

From NoSoftwarePatents.com

"Many large companies operating on a global scale, including European ones, seem to be in favour of a software patenting regime. But most small enterprises are strongly opposed."

Source: http://www.nosoftwarepatents.com/en/m/untruths/sme.html

"Only very few European companies have prepared themselves for the consequences of a software patent regime. It raises the question how the introduction of the European software patent interacts with a European strategy based on widespread use of ICT's (information and communications technologies)."

Source: http://www.nosoftwarepatents.com/en/m/untruths/competitiveness.html

Other info

FFII's website says[1]: "Dutch text pointing to English PDF to which we can not link directly because the links to it are session-based, see item 342 on page 50"

Related pages on en.swpat.org

• Studies on economics and innovation
• 2009 patent litigation study, also by PriceWaterhouseCoopers

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