|
|
Subscribe / Log in / New account

FSFE: German Parliament says: Stop Granting Software Patents

[Posted April 23, 2013 by ris]

From:  Free Software Foundation Europe <press-AT-fsfeurope.org>
To:  press-release-AT-fsfeurope.org
Subject:  [FSFE PR][EN] German Parliament says: Stop Granting Software Patents
Date:  Tue, 23 Apr 2013 13:09:32 +0200
Message-ID:  <51766BEC.3020101@fsfeurope.org>

= German Parliament says: Stop Granting Software Patents =

[Read online: http://fsfe.org/news/2013/news-20130422-01.en.html]

The German Parliament, the Bundestag, has adopted a joint motion against
software patents. The resolution urges the German government to take steps to
limit the granting of patents on computer programs.

In the resolution [1], the Parliament says that patents on software restrict
developers from exercising their copyright privileges, including the right to
distribute their programs as Free Software. Patents help to create monopolies
in the software market, and hurt innovation and job creation. The Parliament
calls on the German government to make sure that Free Software development is
not restricted by patents.

"Software patents are harmful in every way, and are useless at promoting
innovation", says Karsten Gerloff, President of the Free Software Foundation
Europe. "We urge the German government to act on this resolution as soon as
possible, and relieve software developers from the needless patent-related
costs and risks under which they are currently suffering."

Software patents [2] are illegal under the European Patent Convention.
Nevertheless, the European Patent Office has granted tens of thousands of
patents covering software. As a result, software developers constantly risk
being accused of patent infringement. This causes legal uncertainty which is
costly for large companies, and potentially deadly for small ones.

The Parliament's resolution reminds the government that, under the EU's
Computer Programs Directive, software is covered by copyright, not patents. It
calls on the government to finally put the directive's "copyright approach"
into practice, and make German law more concrete in this regard. It also
points out that the restrictions which patents impose are incompatible with
the most widely used Free Software licenses.

For any future initiative to reform European rules on copyright and patents,
the Parliament asks the German government to make sure that developers'
economic exploitation rights for their programs are not restricted by patents.
The government should also push to ensure that software is covered by
copyright alone, and that patent offices (including the European Patent
Office) stop granting patents on software.

== Contact ==

Karsten Gerloff,
Free Software Foundation Europe
President
<gerloff@fsfeurope.org>
+49 176 9690 4298


== More information: ==

- Joint Motion approved by the Bundestag (in German, PDF) [2].

[1] http://dip21.bundestag.de/dip21/btd/17/130/1713086.pdf


- Background on software patents

[2] http://fsfe.org/campaigns/swpat/swpat.en.html



== About the Free Software Foundation Europe ==

The Free Software Foundation Europe (FSFE) is a non-profit
non-governmental organisation active in many European countries and
involved in many global activities. Access to software determines
participation in a digital society. To secure equal participation in the
information age, as well as freedom of competition, the Free Software
Foundation Europe (FSFE) pursues and is dedicated to the furthering of
Free Software, defined by the freedoms to use, study, modify and copy.
Founded in 2001, creating awareness for these issues, securing Free
Software politically and legally, and giving people Freedom by
supporting development of Free Software are central issues of the FSFE.

http://fsfe.org/
_______________________________________________
Press-release mailing list
Press-release@fsfeurope.org
https://mail.fsfeurope.org/mailman/listinfo/press-release

to post comments

Excellent!

Posted Apr 23, 2013 20:37 UTC (Tue) by coriordan (guest, #7544) [Link] (8 responses)

This is great news, especially given that half of Europe's case law on software patents has come from the German courts, and they've been drifting toward allowing software patents.

I don't know Germany's political system, but I see that Angela Merkel's party are included as supporters of this declaration. Did the necessary proportion of the governing parties support this declaration?

I'll have to give the text a quick (attempted) read, but it sounds like this is something we should push for in the rest of the EU member states.

Excellent!

Posted Apr 23, 2013 20:40 UTC (Tue) by tao (subscriber, #17563) [Link] (1 responses)

Probably not gonna fly in Sweden at least -- both the government and the opposition are firmly ensconced in the pockets of the US IPR-mafia.

Excellent!

Posted Apr 24, 2013 8:47 UTC (Wed) by HenrikH (subscriber, #31152) [Link]

Well Software Patents is not legal in Sweden as such yet, but we are unfortunately voting for it (except of course the Pirate Party) whenever it appears in EU mostly due to lobbying from LM Ericsson (their modern telco switches are more software than hardware these days).

Excellent!

Posted Apr 23, 2013 21:16 UTC (Tue) by laf0rge (subscriber, #6469) [Link] (1 responses)

> I don't know Germany's political system, but I see that Angela Merkel's
> party are included as supporters of this declaration. Did the necessary
> proportion of the governing parties support this declaration?

It is a motion of the parliamentary groups of all the four mentioned politacal parties, calling the government (i.e. chanceller Merkel and her ministers) to ensure that software is protected by copyright and not patents, and also calling them to take the respective position at a European level.

AFAIK this is not legally binding by any means, i.e. the executive can still act different than the legislative (the parliament) mandates. However, the parliamentary groups of the largest parties both in government and opposition are supporting this motion - that's a pretty strong statement.

So not sure what you consider "necessary proportion". The proportion cannot get any larger, I would say. The only party not in the motion is the socialist party. And that's routine only because the other parties ever wants to do anything together with them on principle ;)

The people named under the motion are the heads of the respective parliamentary groups of the four parties.

Excellent!

Posted Apr 24, 2013 14:29 UTC (Wed) by oever (guest, #987) [Link]

When in 2004 the EU was drafting a law allowing software patents, the responsible dutch minister Brinkhorst voted in favor of software patents. He was ordered by the Dutch parliament change his vote to 'no'. He did not do so and got away with it unscathed. Luckily the law did not pass as is thanks to Poland and the European Parliament.

Excellent!

Posted Apr 24, 2013 9:46 UTC (Wed) by Felix (subscriber, #36445) [Link] (3 responses)

while it is certainly good news I would recommend not to hold your breath. This was not a vote by the full parliament but just a final report by a parliament committee. I don't expect a major change in real politics.

Once this topic is discussed in the regular plenum for a legally binding decision there will be all kinds of lobbyists and other members of parliament who will make sure that nothing really changes. Probably it will be like the 'software "as such" is not patentable"-policy from EPA.

False news

Posted Apr 24, 2013 10:23 UTC (Wed) by kruemelmo (guest, #8279) [Link] (2 responses)

This was not even a report by a parliament committee, but a motion which was passed to four parliament committees for further consideration on April 19.

Once this topic is discussed in the regular plenum the motion will probably have changed.

See http://www.bundestag.de/dokumente/protokolle/amtlicheprot... , Tagesordnungspunkt 17.

The FSFE was a bit soon with the news.

So we have to contact those committees?

Posted Apr 24, 2013 14:20 UTC (Wed) by coriordan (guest, #7544) [Link]

So what can we do to make this work?

If I've understood, this is parliamentary item #17 of the day, and it's a "petition(?)" that has been passed to three committees. These will discuss it and probably modify it, and then it will be a "motion/report" and the parliament will then vote to adopt or reject it?

So we should get people in Germany to contact the members of those three committees, right?

Help sought for a wiki page on this

Posted Apr 24, 2013 14:52 UTC (Wed) by coriordan (guest, #7544) [Link]

I've put the details here:

http://en.swpat.org/wiki/German_parliament_petition_again...

Any help is welcome. I don't know the German political system and my German is weak.

German Parliment: Please uphold the law

Posted Apr 24, 2013 9:04 UTC (Wed) by Seegras (guest, #20463) [Link]

The European Patent Convention explicitly forbids Patents on Software "as such". This "as such" has lead to the absurd reasoning by the European Patent Agency (and Patent Lawyers), that if you attach "..runs on a computer" this somehow constitutes a new machine.

If you have the idea to put only copies of Moby Dick on a Bookshelf it magically becomes the "Moby Dick Support Device" (pat. pending) http://seegras.discordia.ch/Blog/the-moby-dick-support-de...

FSFE: German Parliament says: Stop Granting Software Patents

Posted Jun 7, 2013 17:03 UTC (Fri) by laf0rge (subscriber, #6469) [Link]

Please note at the time this was released on lwn (April 23) it was still a discussion paper. Already supported by the heads of the parliamentary groups of all major government+opposition parties. However, today it was formally voted upon, as you can read in this (German) news item: http://www.heise.de/newsticker/meldung/Bundestag-fordert-...


Copyright © 2013, Eklektix, Inc.
Comments and public postings are copyrighted by their creators.
Linux is a registered trademark of Linus Torvalds