2005-04-17 German Young Social Democrats and Green Youth against software patents
[ Patent news | German ]
In a joint statement of Grüne Jugend and Jusos these German party Youth organisation critizise the Council Common position and recommend to adhere to the results of the first reading in EU-Parliament in the second reading.
Joint Statement of Grüne Jugend and Jusos
As the Common Position was adopted in violation of the rules of procedure of the Council, we demand that the results of the 1st reading should be passed, which would mean an effective limitation of software patents (and we thus agree with the demands of the Bundestag (German parliament)). The Council of Ministers presents its changes as 'cosmetic', but these changes would in actual fact widely facilitate the patenting of software.
For major parts of the European software industry this would represent a significant economic threat, or at least being dependent on patent-holding corporations, with most (more than 70%) of the software patents issued in the EU being in the hands of US or Japanese companies. As a consequence, the software market would become increasingly monopolised and thus less competitive, which would be detrimental to all consumers.
Our development of society leads towards a knowledge-based society, computer program gain importance in every aspect of our economic life. However, by software patents their flexibility and utility decreases. In the future we can expect a continuos informatisation of the workplace and therefore this directive will habe impact on our future. Software patents lead to a monopolisation of knowledge and are further unnessary since Software is already being protected by copyright and adequate informal measures of protection (secrecy of the code etc.).
