Softwarepatenten.be

We hadden natuurlijk al een tijdje de geluidsopnames en transcripties van de Raad van Ministers van 18 mei 2004. Maar nu is er ook een integrale video-opname opgedoken (in mpeg4). Voor de liefhebbers zijn er ook de belangrijkste fragmenten:

• standpunt van België, Fientje Moerman (Frans en Engels, 8.3 Mb)
• standpunt van Nederland, Laurens-Jan Brinkhorst (Nederlands, 2.4 Mb)
• discussie tussen voorzitter Ierland en Denemarken (Engels, 1.4 Mb)
• de hele discussie over softwarepatenten (originele talen, 198 Mb)
  

Belgische verklaring (voor de pauze)

Thank you madam president. Ladies and gentlemen, Madam Chair, I would like start by congratulating you Madam Chairman for all the efforts you put this over the last five months for with a view to make progress on this directive and more generally in the field of intellectual property.

Like most of the other delegations in council, Belgium wants to make sure we have fair protection for investments which put into innovations in all sectors, particularly when we are talking about inventions in the computer sector.

But we are also concerned about the impact of patentability of computer-implemented inventions on research, competitiveness and particularly research and competitiveness for SMEs. We are concerned about consumer rights, technilogical innovation and interoperability of computer systems.

There are certain points with the presidencies compromise however does not seem to us to reconcile or to cater for the concerns that we have in mind and I refer to. That means we still have some difficulties in the Belgian delegation, particularly to do with the exclusion of computer programs as such from the right to protection by patentability, the definition of the so called technical contributions and the risks of barriers to the interoperability of computer systems.

In terms of exclusion of computer programs from protection afforded by patentability we think that the provisions we talk about computer programs as such particularly "a computer program in source code, in object source or in any other source not being patentable". That is something we need to deal with in a seperate article. So far that is a provision that is being included in a Recital of the Directive.

Moving on to the definition of a technical contribution. The Belgian delegation is in favour of a slightly amended version of amendments 69 and 107 of the European Parliament. The objectives to avoid dataprocessing programs being patentable as such in the context of the directive.

And finally on the question of interoberability of computer systems we in the Belgian delegation believe that referring to article 82 of the founding treaty is not going to be a sufficient measure in itself. We think it will be a better idea to say that under certain strict conditions some steps second to ensure interoperability of computer systems cannot be deemed to be an infringement of that patent.

And that is why, not whithstanding the efforts that have being made, to try to strike a compromise at all members of the council will be able to subscribe to, we in the Belgian delegation will vote against it. We hope that it's some later juncture the concerns we have voiced will be given greater credence.

Madam Chairman, I will submit this to the council secretary as in the aforementioned declaration to be added to the minutes of our meeting

Belgische verklaring (na de pauze)

Thank you madam president. We have listened with great interest to the compromise proposals of the Commission, which, to a large extent, go into the direction which we want. But this will not make us vote in favour of the compromise, however, we will abstain.