Reports on the quality of the European Patent Office

2005-06-04 Dutch Advisory Committee on Software Patents

• "Advice to the State Secretary of Economic Affairs on the stance to be adopted by the Netherlands in the second reading on the Directive on the Patentability of Computer-implemented Inventions. (...) It has become clear to the Advisory Committee during its consultations that the major problems in current practice are: - The fact that too many patents are granted on software inventions that, in the view of those in practice, make no or only a very limited contribution to the state of the art. The fact that many patents granted are not actually for new inventions, but that those assessing the patents lack sufficient knowledge of the 'prior art' in order to determine this. - The fact that patents on software and/or computer programmes do not properly meet the requirement under patent law of the scope for further development of the disclosure, as a result of which the contribution to the state of the art remains hidden, even to an expert, and compromises the principle of 'quid pro quo' that underlies patent law. - The fact that patents are nevertheless granted on business methods."

The report can be found in Dutch on the Dutch ministry's website here. You need the report named "Bijlage: EU-richtlijn voor octrooiering van in computers geimplementeerde uitvindingen" dated 02-06-2005. Vrijschrift/FFII-NL has a copy as well as a plain-text version.

2001-12 Legal and economical aspects of software patents - Dutch ministry of Economic Affairs

• "Experts estimate that less than 10% of software patents in Europe protect legitimate inventions"

Original in Dutch, Vrijschrift copy page 22