2005-01-02 LU/EU Council Presidency Priorities: Promote Patents, Conclude Software Directive
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The Luxemburg presidency has pledeged its belief in the patent system as "one of the best ways of promoting entrepreneurship in Europe" and support for "dossiers on intellectual and industrial property", among others for a revival of the Community Patent and for "successful conclusion" of the "directive on the patentability of computer-generated inventions".
The Text
- Presidency Priorities:
- Intellectual and industrial property Ensuring economic continuity for the results of research and encouraging economic risk-taking are some of the best ways of promoting entrepreneurship in Europe. The Luxembourg Presidency intends to continue the efforts under way, to achieve this objective by promoting dossiers on intellectual and industrial property. The Luxembourg Presidency will have to examine whether the conditions are propitious for relaunching the dossier on the Community patent. It is aware that no advantageous economic alternative to this project, currently in deadlock, exists. The proposal for a directive on the patentability of computer-generated inventions must also be concluded successfully in 2005.
The French original speaks about 'inventions mises en oevre par ordinateur', i.e. the official term "computer-implemented inventions".
The text also contains a paragraph about methodologies for improving the quality of Community legislation which are currently being proposed by the Commission. The Council might do good in trying to apply these methodologies to the Council's Software Patent Agreement.
Comments / FAQ
Question: What does this Text Mean?
Answer
It means that the "Intellectual Property (Patents) Working Party" is still in control and able to impose its views on the Luxemburg presidency just as on all the other previous presidencies. Previous programmatic statements have been even more blindly pro-patent than this one. E.g. in March 2003, when the dossier was still in the Parliament, the Council pledged its resolve to "protect patents" for "computer-implemented inventions". The Council has always been pursuing patents for the sake of patents. This time they claim that it is for entrepreneurship, but of course nobody in the patent policy working group cares whether patents really serve entrepreneurship. There is ample evidence in disfavor of such an assertion, at least as far as "computer-implemented" (software) solutions are concerned. But nobody is interested in this evidence. Words such as "entrepreneurship" or "innovation" are merly codewords for "patents", or, more precisely, for "the agenda of the governmental patent officials who are anonymously organised in the Patents Working Party". The Patents Working Party has once more demonstrated that it is the master of its dossiers. Such a demonstration -- one could call it a pledge of allegiance to the patent faith -- is conducted at the beginning of every EU Council Presidency. It is already a traditional EU ritual. The Luxemburg Presidency is said to lack ardency in its patent beliefs, at least compared to the Dutch. But even disbelievers often tend to respect established rituals.
