Europes Software Patent Law Essay -- Patenting Economics Essays

Europe's Software Patent Law Today in Europe, the issue of software patentability is a heated and controversial topic amongst the software industry. Currently Europe’s software patent law is unclear and inconsistent. There has been a wide spread effort by major players in Europe’s software industry and governmental bodies to try to formalize and disambiguate the law on the patentability of software. But up to know there has been very little progress in the formalization of this law. What has resulted is an ongoing controversy amongst the Europeans. Proponents of software patenting have been calling for an extension of the scope of software patenting. However, its opponents have been calling for a drastic reduction of what should be patentable software. We begin our discussion with the roots of how patent law came to be in Europe and then focus our attention to the current law of software patentability. We then turn to a current controversial issue in Europe’s software industry and then get key ethical perspectives on this issue. We then finish up with my defense on particular position of a proposed ethical issue on the current software patent law. Established by the Convention on the Grant of European Patents (EPC) in 1973, the European Patent Organization was created to establish a uniform patent system in Europe. The European Patent Organization is an intergovernmental body setup by the EPC1, its members are made up of contracting states of the European Union (EU) including the United Kingdom, Germany, and France to name a few. The executive arm of the European Patent Organization is the European Patent Office (EPO) whose function is to grant European patents to each of its contracting states. The administrat... ...ww.wired.com/news/politics/0,1283,37721,00.html 3.Donald, James A.,"The American Revolution - an HTML project," Locke's Second Treatise (Chap V) On Property, 1997, http://cseserv.engr.scu.edu/NQuinn/COEN288/LockeOnProperty.pdf 4.Duke L. & Tech., SOFTWARE PATENT LAW: UNITED STATES AND EUROPE COMPARED, 2003, http://www.law.duke.edu/journals/dltr/articles/2003dltr0006.html 5.European Patent Office, The European Office, 2003, http://www.european-patent-office.org/index.htm 6.European Software Patent Horror Gallery, European Software Patent Horror Gallery, 2003 http://swpat.ffii.org/vreji/pikta/index.en.html> 7.Spinello, â€Å"Frameworks for Ethical Analysis,† Chapter 2 of Ethical Aspects of Information Technology, Prentice Hall, http://cseserv.engr.scu.edu/NQuinn/COEN288/framework.pdf 8.The Patent Office, The UK Patent Office, 2003, http://www.patent.gov.uk