Greens lead the way on challenging software patents

29th Mar 2005

Jean Lambert aims to block "flawed and biased Directive"

In the last few weeks Jean Lambert and other MEPs, have been flooded with letters from constituents who are gravely concerned about recent developments on the software-patenting directive. The Greens support the protection of software by means of copyright - which is currently the case under the 1991 directive.

Software patents favour huge companies that can afford a well-resourced legal department; this inevitably harms small and medium-sized enterprises, which create most of the innovation in the IT field.

Patents are expensive, create much administrative work, and are granted slowly and for a long time period, while the life cycle of software is short.

Jean Lambert said: "The Greens in the European Parliament will demand that the text is rewritten when the directive returns to the European Parliament for a second reading. We will propose all of those amendments that were put forward first time round so that we can limit patentability as far as is possible."

Until now, computer code has been an amazingly fertile source of open source (i.e.non-proprietary) software. This means that open source software is enabling an increasing number of European institutions (e.g. the German Bundestag and security services, and municipalities like Munich and Paris) to free themselves from being locked in to the products of Microsoft, a company which has been fined by the Commission for abusing its monopoly power in Europe.

There is also a strong constitutional argument here as the European Parliament has already requested that software should be excluded from the Draft Directive. The Commission has apparently ignored this request and has attempted to push the Draft through at the last Council of Ministers meeting.

Mrs Lambert continued: "I am determined that the Commission's attempts to push through a flawed and biased Directive without adequate public discussion are rebuffed by the Parliament."