FFII: European Commission says software is not patentable

Posted May 26, 2006 14:21 UTC (Fri) by kleptog (subscriber, #1183) [Link]

Well, it's complicated issue and what interests me in this story is not the bit about software patents (though surely interesting) but how the EPO is related to the ECJ.

The European Patent Office (EPO) is not related to the EC (European Community) so deciding who is accountable to what is somewhat tricky. You can't really fold the EPO into the EC because that leaves signitories to the EPO that are not members of the EC out in the cold.

It's a really hard problem and it may well be insoluble. I'm undecided if thats a good thing or not. One the one hand, giving the ECJ some control over what the EPO is doing would be a Good Thing. OTOH, a single set of rules for patents over the whole EC gives you a single point of failure in the case of changes.