EU Software Patents

[Armin Herbert]

Hi Oliver,



On 26-Nov-00 Olivier Berger wrote:

> The EPC counts 20 members, some of them are members of the European
> Union, others not.

We agree about that.


>> A decision of the EU (meaning, the European Comission (20 members) is
>> expected on Dec, 15. The European Comission wants to see some "expert"
>> report (meaning, statements from the business) first.
> 
> As far as I know, the EU counts only 15 members at the present time. 

Yes, but as you can see in [1] the European Comission counts 20 members,
AFAIK representatives of the 15 member countries. Sh*t. Any lawyer here?
I'm confused ;-)


>> As a summary we can say that Europe will be free of software patents,
>> that's right :-)
> 
> Not at all.
> 
> If the EU soon decides to have them in the EU, the EPO (European Patent
> Office) will soon decide ta have them too... so the fight is not over
> even if we allready won a battle.

What do you mean by that?
If 17 out of 20 members of the ECC decided not to allow software patents,
what could happen if their countries join the EU (and what about
Switzerland e.g., who decided _not_ to join?) ? And .. well, that's
speculative, but in my opinion Poland (which probably will be the first
country joining the EU) won't care about software patents, because their
main goal is to import from, not to export to the EU member states?

Oliver, can you please tell us more about this and illuminate the dust a
bit? I couldn't learn much from the press releases you quoted.


[1] http://europe.eu.int/comm/commissioners/index_en.htm



Armin.