who is thomas mann?
Einer seiner Pressemitteilungen: http://www.mann-europa.de/wirtschaftsausschuss/wirtschaft.htm#fnp_softwarepatente
babelfish:
Thousands of enamels and faxes, more than 250,000 signatures and approximately 1,000 demonstrators before the seat of the European patent office in Munich and the European parliament in Brussels and Strasbourg - in such a way the protest of humans looked, who are occupied of occupation because of main with the virtual one. Fritz Bolkestein, which European Union domestic market commissioner, had a guideline to the patent protection of program products suggested, which Europe brought computer specialists out completely on the barricades. Recently we co-ordinated in the European parliament on this guideline.
"Software" is the comprehensive term for all kinds of computer programs. After a European convention they cannot be patented in principle. They are general goods, which are protected against pirat copies by copyright. A patenting would be more comprehensive; it would forbid any kind of the imitation. That is meaningful, if high research and development costs must be protected against Ideenklau. The regulations of the convention seized very far led however to the fact that the patent offices in Europe gave already approximately 33,000 software patents. Since an appropriate European Union guideline is missing so far, requirements for license from these patents before court are not interspersable. It is the more important that clarity is created. Fundamental is to be specified, what in the software range it is patentable and which not.
From all parts of Hessen I received post office from enterprise founders, managing directors and programmers, particularly from small and middle enterprises (KMU), likewise from computer science professors and students. Tenor: Software patents are a danger for the existence of IT enterprises and the progress of the entire industry. They lead to trivial patents on little fastidious inventions. In addition count algorithms, mathematical methods and bare business ideas. Examples of it are electronic goods baskets or the high and Herunterschieben (Scrollen) of screen windows. "that is comparable in the everyday life with patenting of hand movements", brings it a Frankfurt programmer in the discussion with me on the point. If it would go according to the European Union commission, with each use of these constantly occurring elements royalties would result. From a simple "hand movement" such an uncalculable cost factor became.
In the USA trivial patent is possible since longer, which led to license processes in billion height. In order to protect itself against similar excrescences by European Union software patents, to "each software developer a patent lawyer would have to be placed to the side, the work of a daily in the nightshift against patent claims third controlled", means an anxious managing director from the Hochtaunuskreis. The medium-size coined/shaped IT industry in Europe does not know the costs of it shoulders. This is possible for only large software companies, which sit nearly all in the USA. If trivial patents in the European Union were approved, the dominance of these multis on the world markets of far could be increased - at expense of the KMU. Such competitive disadvantages cannot be in the sense of Europe. Finally the KMU is job engine of our economics, to which the European parliament always granted a special role.
The planned tuning in the EP had to be shifted because of 120 requests for modification, which made our substantial doubts clear. In the tuning then a majority for the commission suggestion was, however under substantial restrictions of the original wording. The border of the patenting barness was drawn substantially more closely by us. So only "meaningful technical innovations" are to be patented with their software in the future - not however the software "as such". Trivial patents might hardly still occur.
After this first reading of the EP the Council of Ministers must - which specialized Ministers of all fifteen member states - color to admit. Among other things still another highly transparent regulation must be found for trivial patents already given. I assume also in the second reading - after discussions with the Entscheidern and the employees into the KMU - load-carrying compromises in the parliament are found.
in: FNP. The hessian CDU European delegate Thomas Mann from Schwalbach at the Taunus belongs to the economic and monetary committee of the European parliament.
