2004-07-27 DE Bitkom (Eicta) asks Government to Stop Software Patent Survey

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Complains that the object of patenting is "misleadingly" called "software" instead of "computer-implemented inventions", says this will lead to biased results.

The German government launched an industry survey on july 15th in which it asks all kinds of companies to estimate the cost and benefits of patenting software on their company. Bitkom is one of the associations that were asked for cooperation in conducting the survey.

Previously Bitkom had relentlessly lobbied for program claims, stressing that software as such should receive patent "protection", because the "software industry" is a "multi billion euro business" and should no longer be disadvantaged with regard to "other industries". It is however clear that Bitkom has never asked its member companies about the economic implications of patenting and in fact does not want such questions to be asked. Bitkom had treated the subject as a legal matter, to be decided among corporate patent lawyers within its "industrial property committee". Decisions in this committee have regularly been taking by voting among 7-8 lawyers from IBM, Siemens, Microsoft, HP, Sun, Giesecke & Devrient etc.

Bitkom conducted a poll among its members in 2002, consisting of questions such as "would you rather own many or few patents?", according to which, by Bitkom's logic, FFII would end up being counted as a supporter of software patentability. Yet even this fuzzy Bitkom poll showed a large majority of Bitkom members "against US-style software patenting". In spite of Bitkom's statements to the contrary, Bitkom is currently lobbying for the imposition of US-style software patentability on Europe.

See details in german version.