2004-09-07 AU Gov: FTA will not affect approach to patenting computer software
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original media report (click through an interspersed advertisement!)
The article reports various statement from Christopher Pearce, MP of the governing coalition in Australia, e.g. that they do not want to prefer opensource software in public administrations for "ideological" reasons but only based on "total cost of ownership" considerations. Moreover Pearce vigourously defends the planned "Free Trade Agreement" with the United States. As far as patents concerns he makes the following statements:
"I understand the trade agreement will not have an effect on Australia's current approach and treatment of applications to patent computer software," said Pearce, adding that software was patentable if it met the criteria of being "new", "inventive", a "manner of manufacture" and useful".
"The claims that we have seen from the ALP and the Democrats that Australian software producers would be harmed by the Australia-US Free Trade Agreement are nothing more than unfounded scare tactics."
Pearce's statements are untrue in several ways
- AUSFTA requires Australia to interpret Art 27 TRIPs in a way that excludes the "manner of manufacture" limitation (stipulating that the term "susceptible of industrial application" on which this is based must be interpreted in the US manner as meaning "useful").
- AUSFTA requires Australia to move more toward the US practise and not away from it. By imposing certain interpretations of TRIPs, it denies Australia's parliament the freedom to legislate on patentability and thereby prevents corrections of the "current practise" (which is largely based on unrevised decisions of the patent judiciary) toward a regime that is found more conducive to innovation.
The government itself is apparently involved in unfounded misinformation tactics. This is no wonder given that usually government officials usually obtain their information from civil servants working in the patent system. It is also not surprising, given Peace's failure to see the relevance of governmental software procurement for maintaining open standards and free competition in the market (he calls such considerations "ideological").
