Elspeth Atwooll (MEP, UK Libdem) 2004-06-09 on Software Patents
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Compared to her previous letter a few days earlier, this letter from Elspeth Atwooll seems a lot more aware of the 'weakness' of the Council text, and asks for help in finding suitable wording to fix it.
- Thank you for your email regarding my personal position and that of the Liberal Democrat party on the proposed EU Directive on the patentability of computer-implemented inventions. On my understanding, the purpose of the Directive is to regulate the patenting of things like mobile phones, robots etc driven by a computer code and to limit the activities of the EU Patent Office, which seemed to be moving toward allowing the patenting of software as such. You correctly note that the Liberal Democrat party has made it clear that we would "support continued widespread innovation in software by resisting the wider application of patents in this area." The
LibDems are in favour of increased legal certainty in the EU. We believe that a balance needs to be struck between the needs of small business on the one hand, to protect their inventions - and big business, on the other, from patenting everything to the exclusion of competitors. This has guided our approach to the legislation during its passage through the European Parliament. The European Parliament voted its first reading on the proposal in September 2003 where amendments were adopted to strictly limit patents to new inventions only. The Parliament's position would harmonise current practice in the European Patents Office, and ensure that patents in the field of computer engineering would be issued on the same basis in all EU Member States. Specifically, the UK Liberal Democrats supported an amendment to the definition, so that "In order to be patentable, a computer-implemented invention must be susceptible of industrial application and new and involve an inventive step. In order to involve an inventive step, a computer-implemented invention must make a technical contribution". The principle was accepted by the Council of Ministers when it adopted its common position on 18 May, but the wording has been watered down by them. The Council also ignored some 80% of Parliaments amendments, mostly concerned to prevent the patenting of software as such. Personally, whilst I was not present to vote in September, I would have supported the Parliaments overall position as all but a handful of British MEPs did. As such I will clearly take part in the Parliaments discussions over which amendments it may wish to re-table, or indeed strengthen, at second reading. I think that the lack of a definition of what constitutes a technical contribution does seem to be a weakness in the current text and ought to be clarified by MEPs at second reading. As I have already said to a number of other experts (including from the academic world) who have been in contact with me it would thus be useful to be able to work constructively with you to find a wording that could protect innovation. If you have views on this, I would be delighted to receive them if I am re-elected. I hope that this information is of use and that it might persuade you to vote Liberal Democrat in the forthcoming election.
Archived version of the letter with discussion
Both letters from Elspeth Atwooll are based on a press release from Diana Wallis after the vote of September 23 - as you can see, the critique to the new letter is the same, but it's good to see some apparently personal comments at the end of this letter.
Her MEP web site: http://www.elspethattwoollmep.org.uk/ (you can read about her interests there on her activities page for example)
Overview of her at the Scottish Libdems site: http://www.scotlibdems.org.uk/biographies/attwoolle.htm
Contact info at the Liberal Democrats European Group site: http://www.ldeg.org/meps/attwooll_mep.htm
Her profile: http://www.alba.org.uk/meps/elspethattwooll.html
Her old europarl page http://wwwdb.europarl.eu.int/ep5/owa/whos_mep.data?ipid=0&ilg=EN&iucd=4547
Her new europarl page http://wwwdb.europarl.eu.int/ep6/owa/whos_mep.data?ipid=0&ilg=EN&iucd=4547
Her fields of activity:
- Committee on Fisheries, Member (apparenty fishery is her main interest)
- Committee on Regional Development, Member
- Committee on Employment and Social Affairs, Substitute
