Arlene McCarthy 2004-05-28: Software companies need patents, Stallman Naive
In a Wired article, the UK Labour MEP who reported on the software patent directive for the European Parliament and was overruled by this parliament last september, Arlene McCarthy, says that software companies need patents to protect their interests and the opponents, whom she sees only in the free software movement, are naive and spreading a "barrage of misinformation".
At the same time McCarthy claims that she is favor of the European Parliament's amendments of last september. These amendments in fact confirm the non-patentability of software and would thereby, as industrial patent lawyers have been vociferously saying, lead to the annullation of software patents granted by the EPO, i.e. those patents that McCarthy says are necessary.
McCarthy is probably afraid that her party will not nominate her as rapporteur again. For this reason she pretends to be in favor of the amendments for which her party voted, while at the same time preparing for a role as a negotiator of "compromises" with the Council, which she will be trying to sell to the Parliament. This is basically what McCarthy did in 2003 as a JURI rapporteur. The JURI amendments came from the Council "experts" and are now part of the Council "compromise". The common form of these amendments is "Software is never never never more rhetorical bloat that simulates fierce commitment ... patentable, unless [ ... more bloat, upon closer scrutiny a condition that is always true ... ]."
