Compliance Toolkit

Do patents threaten your business?

Bruce Perens CNET News

Published: 02 Feb 2005 10:50 GMT

Meanwhile, European businesses are being lulled into the belief that theirs is a less litigious society and that the patent suits won't arise. They wrongly assume that their patent office will hold to a much higher standard than the one that prevails in the United States. But the software patents already granted in Europe track the text of the US versions, and the same litigious companies file patents on both sides of the Atlantic.

Earlier this month, 61 members of the European Parliament filed a resolution asking to restart the software patent debate because, they said, the process had been tainted by politics. But appointed bureaucrats attempted an end-run around the elected representatives, twice scheduling motions that would enable software patent approval without a vote by the representatives. So far, Polish representatives have delayed the item, but final approval could come at a 2 February meeting of JURI, the European Parliament's committee on legal affairs.

Many holders of software patents have been holding back on lawsuits until the European software-patenting measure is approved, lest they provide examples against the very legislation they desire. If the legislation passes, expect a rash of lawsuits in both the United States and Europe.

Europeans are starting to realize that the software patent battle can't be caricatured as a battle between open source and the rest of the world. They should support the members of the European Parliament in restarting the patent debate. And this time, they should make sure that they are involved.

At least the Europeans get to have a debate. In the United States, software and business method patenting is the result of two court decisions. And Americans have yet to get started on legislation to solve the problem.

Bruce Perens is a member of the board of directors at Open Source Risk Management, a company that sells insurancelike protection for Linux use. He is also a co-founder and director of Software in the Public Interest, an open-source development organization. He operates an independent consultancy and is a senior research scientist for open source at George Washington University's Cyber Security Policy and Research Institute.