2004-07-24 EU Caricature on Patent Establishment's Information Policy
--> [ Swpat News | Urgent Appeal | Swpat Art | Iraq & Swpat | Bolkestein ]
Proposed by Arend Lammertink of Vrijschrift / FFII Netherlands.
Related caricature proposals submitted to the Video Art Contest sometimes replace the head of the Iraqi information minister by that of Frits Bolkestein who, during the Council meeting of 2004-05-18, tried to allay fears of the present ministers by saying the following:
- The Commission has debated quite a long time about the possibility that a computer program as such could or should be patentable, and has decided against it. And in order to make this absolutely and perfectly clear, the Commission should like to introduce two amendments in Article 4a, which is entitled "exclusions from patentability". The Commission should like to propose a new Part 1 to this Article 4a, and the new Part 1 should quite simply read: "A computer program as such cannot constitute a patentable invention". I should take that as clear, and should allay any kind of apprehensions that, by some magical means, a computer program as such could after all become patentable; once again let me read it out for all clarity's sake: "A computer program as such cannot constitute a patentable invention".
To understand the underlying principles of Bolkestein's and the European Patent Establishment's information policy, read:
