EU software patents directive

The EU software patents directive was a proposal by the European Commission to allow the patenting of software ideas in the European Union. The proposal was the subject of intense public debate and lobbying and was eventually rejected by the European Parliament in 2005 by a massive majority.

The proposal

The European Patent Office (EPO) had already been granting software patents, despite "programs for computers" being excluded from patentability in the European Patent Convention. The European Commission's proposed legislation would have replaced the European Patent Convention with a directive which copied EPO practice. The European Commission and pro-software-patent lobby groups claimed that this was simple "harmonisation".

Timeline

• The European Commission published a proposal to introduce legislation which would clearly allow software ideas to be patentable
• September 2003: EU Parliament Votes for Real Limits on Patentability
• 2004: Council of Ministers discards the European Parliament's amendments
• June 2005: The European Parliament rejects the directive outright

Amendments

• February 2002 anti-swpat amendments suggestions
• June 2005 anti-swpat amendments suggestions

List of letters written to MEPs

(This list will be very long when completed, so will probably be split off into its own page.)

• http://www.timj.co.uk/digiculture/patents/timeline.php

Who was involved

Organisations active against software patents

• FFII - the main campaign against software patents, to whom Europe owes a lot of thanks
• FSFE
• Opera Software
• Red Hat
• Sun Microsystems
• CEA-PME
• UEAPME
• eZ systems (they were in 2006 - were they active for the directive?)

Organisations active for software patents

• Campaign for Creativity
• Ericsson
• IBM
• Microsoft
• Nokia
• Philips
• SAP
• Siemens

Organisations yet to be classified

• Google - represented by Mrs. Moll

Related pages on ESP Wiki

• EU 2005 proposed amendments - by the coalition against software patents
• Consultation Paper on the Patentability of Computer-Implemented Inventions, 2000
• Software patents exist in Europe, mostly

Some people involved

Hundreds of people were involved, but to keep this list reasonable, these are the ones for whom ESP Wiki has articles:

• Adam Gierek
• Erik Josefsson
• Florian Mueller
• Ciarán O'Riordan
• François Pellegrini
• Mark Webbink

External links

• A 2002 FAQ published by the European Parliament about the directive
• Political memory - record of who voted how in the 1st reading, September 2003
• French original: Letter from 33 scientists against software patents (English translations^[?]: Google, bing translator)
  • Reports: cnet, ecommercetimes
• Conflicts About Intellectual Property Claims: The Role and Function of Collective Action Networks - a paper about the lobbying on this directive
• Wikipedia: Proposed directive on the patentability of computer-implemented inventions
• FFII requests in order to clarify non-patentability of software, a 10 point summary by FFII
• Software patents : Timeline of Tim Jackson's correspondence - with MEPs from the UK
• http://nobananaunion.com - one of the many anti-software-patent sites