The German Ministry of Economics and Technology has said that
software patents, if made more available in Europe, would
compromise innovation, interoperability and the open source
movement. Its comments were based on the results of a study it
commissioned, carried out by the Karlsruher Fraunhofer Institute
for Systems and Innovation Research and the Max Planck Institute
for Foreign and Informational Patent, Copyright and Competition
Law.
The study of 263 German businesses concluded that Europe should
avoid the US model of allowing business method and software
patents. The European Commission is soon expected to re-draft EU
law based on the results of a consultation on how far to liberate
the laws on software patents.
Recently, the European Patent Organisation (EPO)modified its
guidelines on patentability of inventions. The modification
provides that a “computer-implemented invention” (which includes
software) shall be eligible for a patent if it shows a “technical
effect which lends technical character to a computer program.” The
guidelines explain that,
"this may be found e.g. in the control of an
industrial process or in processing data which represent physical
entities or in the internal functioning of the computer itself or
its interfaces under the influence of the program and could, for
example, affect the efficiency or security of a process, the
management of computer resources required or the rate of data
transfer in a communication link."
