Slovenian Ministry clarifies stance against Irish Council Presidency's position
The Slovenian Ministry of information society has today issued a new precise stance on what they support.
This statement is more detailed than the earlier one. They now say exactly what they support.
Translation
On May 14th 2004 the Ministry of information sociaty has sent their official opinion about the EU parliament directive about patentability.
On May 10th 2004 the commison of the Council issued two documents: a report about harmonization of Directive document which lists the hindrances of other EU member countries and the consolidated text of proposal of Directive.
Our opinion in reference to the mentioned documents is as follows:
- the Ministry of Information Society agrees with the hindrances expressed in the 9th paragraph of the report (suggested by Italy, supported by Belgium), where a insertion of text is demanded, which explicitly requests exclusion of computer programs as such in source or object code or any other form from patent protection, in the text of the Directive itself.
We associate with Germany's hindrance, which are supported by Belgium (10th paragraph of the Report), which consists of the deletion of recital 13 and deletion of word however in the text of recital 13a. Recital 13 talks about a possibility of protection of procedure or a section of consequent actions executed by a device with patents. Rectital 13a uses the word however to list exceptions. Germany's hindrance specifies exception as a rule and by doing that exempts it from patent protection.
- We also associate with Germany's hindrances supported by Belgium and Denmark listed in the 11th paragraph of the Report, specifically about the extended diction of technical contribution in the paragraph 2b of the Directive. That expansion in same sense has also been accepted by the European Parliament in amendments 107 and 69.
- We also support the Luxemburg hindrance (14th paragraph of the Report) towards article 6a, which exempts the connection between patented records and systems as patent violations. That would also enable interoperability with patent protected systems.
Mentioned existing hindrances of member countries are not regarded in the consolidated text of Directive, because of which we express our concern, which is shared with us by a major part of professional public, mostly the community of open source developers and at least a part of small and medium sized companies.
