Linus Torvalds, the father of the open source operating system Linux, the only one capable of competing with Microsoft in particular in the strategic market for servers, announced Tuesday he wanted to devote all their energies to the development of her child and diffusion of open source: will work with the Open Source Development Lab, the association created by a group of big science (Including IBM, HP, NEC, Fujiitsu, Hitachi) on the Linux platform that has a lot invested.
In the same hours the Legal Affairs Committee of the European Parliament has expressed its support for the proposal submitted by the Commission in February 2002 on the patentability of computer implemented inventions "or software capable of" industrial application "and that it is a "technical contribution".
"This is a proposal to widen and make more uncertain the limits to the patentability of software and which could bring a death blow to many companies, like those we represent, have developed open source products and promoted important innovations, "said the Eurolinux Alliance believes that the proposal" written under the dictation of Microsoft and other software giants gathered in the Business Alliance.
expressed satisfaction but the rapporteur, British Labour MEP Arlene McCarthy: "The patentability of software already exists enough to see over 2000 patents granted in different countries, it is only applied to harmonize the rules across the EU so that it is based on the same criteria wherever and overcome a situation of uncertainty that threatens to penalize European companies . Indeed, the amendments adopted by Parliament set more stringent conditions than those proposed by the Commission. "
And it is the stakes set by the MEPs that could lead to a new battleground between the EU and U.S. policies that are applied to software patents in Europe would become more stringent and would lead, for example, the non-recognition of protection for certain " business methods "protected instead of the Atlantic, as in the case of the now famous" one-click "developed by Amazon, which, moreover, even in the U.S., was the subject of bitter litigation and multimillion because seen by some as merely a combination existing techniques. But according Eurolinux "the stakes set by Parliament would be bogus, Amazon can 'even hope to see more of the first patent-protected in EU his 'inventions' type one-click ".
The software is now generally protected by copyright, and the dispute is whether and when it is possible to extend the patent protection. The risk is that a concession as to avoid indiscriminate patents may both hamper competition and innovation in a sector such as computer, characterized by "incremental innovations" and the other lead, as happened in the U.S., to a high - and expensive - number of legal disputes . How should consider the needs of the open source industry, vital for a growing number of companies. A difficult balance to achieve: as claimed by Trevor Cook, a lawyer expert in intellectual property, "I have the impression that copyright is not enough and that the patent is too much."
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