*** THIS IS A DRAFT ***
The EPO had talks at ITRE on 2005-03-30.
The most important part is a MEP question that got answered (by the EPO?) in the end (track 6?) of the session where it is thought that it is said that everything that can be run on a computer is patentable.
After having the transcription it could be said that there was no such statement, at least not literally. It all goes about co existence of copyright and patents law, about encouraging SMEs for using the patents system and similar. We have to check it all over in more detail.
Summary from a listener of track5 and most of track4. What they say is generally this:
- "We don't patent software. We patent ciis. An invention must be technical. We can't define technical, we decide on a case-by-case basis. If a technical problem (with technical as defined above) is being solved with the help of data processing, it could be patentable. We aren't drifting towards USA practices. How could we? The EPC's different from american law. And, by the way, the reason the EPC contains exclusions is that they concern non-technical inventions."
Bla-bla-bla-bla-bla. Bla-bla. Bla-bla.
They are so careful to say absolutely nothing, that it's hard to find something.
Media
http://www.ffii.org/~zoobab/epo_itre_20050430/ (all audio, gzip'ed Wav)
http://media.ffii.org/epepo050330 (all audio, ogg)
http://www.itia.ntua.gr/~anthony/tmp/epo_itre/ (all audio, ogg)
EpoItreTranscription050330En (transcriptions, work in progress)
