2005-04-27: Sme Union meeting on Software Patents in the European Parliament

Invitation and panel

Invitation Jacques Santer, President of the SME UNION of the EPP and Alexander Radwan, President of the SME Circle of the EPP-ED Group cordially invite you to our Working Tea on Software Patents: Chance or Risk for SMEs? on Wednesday, April 27th, 2005 from 16:30 18:00h ASP 5E2, European Parliament, Rue Wiertz, 1047, Bruxelles Introduction and Moderation: Peter JUNGEN, Co-President of the SME UNION Keynote speech: Piia-Noora KAUPPI MEP, Shadow Rapporteur in the leading committee for the Software Patent Directive Impulse-statements: Friedrich BOCK, IT Expert Austrian Chamber of Commerce Daniel DOLL-STEINBERG, CEO Softwide Elizabeth-Marie COLEMAN, European Commission DG Internal Market (tbc) Oliver LORENZ, Legal Department EMCITA (European Media, Communication and Information Technology Association) David SANT, European Patent Office Joachim WUERMELING MEP, Committee on the Internal Market and Consumer Protection Leo Baumann, EICTA (European Industry Association for Information Systems, Communication Technologies and Consumer Electronics)
Martin ZANDONELLA, CEO Net4You Followed by a discussion with the participants We are looking forward to seeing you!
RSVP until April 25th, 2005 to sme@sme-union.org, Fax: +32 2 230 92 18 or call +32 2 233 38 36 (Project Manager: Roland Fischnaller)

Council Common Position brings software patents
will table amendments on art 2, 3, 4, 5, 6
Many new member states were not really well prepared on 18th May (Council political agreement)
most important amendments: interoperability and data processing
Parliament will improve the Common Position
same arguments as the 21th April JURI meeting

Grey area between Copyright and Patent law (did not understand what he wanted to point out)
There is copyright infringement when you make another implementation of a computer program (completely false, and corrected by one attendee); surprising mistake from a ex-shadow rapporter for this directive

Members of FEC found a agreement with Open Source community in Austria around a position which permits patents for dataprocessing
Open Source is not a problem
Emotional debate

Intervention of someone from the Swedish Enterprises
Question from Erik Josefsson (FFII) if Mr Sant can confirm that Microsoft is applying 2 or 2.5 patents per day at the EPO (answer from Mr Sant: I cannot confirm this number)
Question regarding the cost of litigation (average price of a trial, lawyers fees) and calculation of the damages; representative from the CEC said that damages were calculated in function of the royalties that the patent owner ask. Still unclear whether who fix the price of the royalties and if they are published or not.
Question of a Polish programmer who is the author of 10 pieces of software, and he looked at the US patents, he was saying that he probably violates some 100 patents. How can a developer can have the legal certainty about what he writes?
Question about the compulsory licensing for deaf or blind people (no answer)

Commission is listening to companies that complains
Big telcos companies have complained that it was unacceptable for them to do not have patents on protocols
Digital TV manufacturer (probably Philips) has complained that it was unacceptable for them to see data processing excluded from patentability
Commission believes they have the right to withdraw the directive project if they are not happy with it
Commission believes that Council needs unanimity on amendments CEC don't like in second reading and in conciliation. The Treaty does not mentions that unanimity is required in conciliation.