EP Hearing Academic Views on Software Patent Definitions

According to ZDNet UK on May 17, 2005, the European Parliament's JURI committee will seek the help of legal experts on amendments to the wording of the software patentability directive in a public meeting on Monday, 23 May, from 1515 to 1700 at the European Parliament building on Rue Wiertz in Brussels. The speakers include Uma Suthersanen, a senior lecturer in Intellectual Property Law at Queen Mary Intellectual Property Research Institute; Reto Hilty, a director at the Max Planck Institute for Intellectual Property, Competition and Tax Law; François Pellegrini, an associate professor in computer science at ENSEIRB; and Alberto Bercovitz, from the Spanish law firm Estudio Jurídico.

The article also quotes an unidentified EP spokesman as saying "The directive itself says software is not patentable and the European Patent Office says the same, but software patents have been allowed anyway. The European Patent Office has problems in taking a decision on whether to allow a patent or not."

JURI will next vote on the proposed amendments on either June 6 or 20, 2005.