 Software patents are here and they're really hard to kill and they keep coming so it is time to do something. Our next two speakers will give you a brief overview of what happened in the past, how it worked and what we could do about that in the future. Please give a very warm applause to Iga and Benjamin. I cannot see the first slide. I'm not sure if I'm supposed to do anything and it's gonna be just screened behind my back. I don't know so I'm still waiting. Hello my name is Iga, I'm a lawyer so someone with totally different interests probably than you do have and what I can say by now all the law related conference I've ever been to are much more boring than this one. Okay so we have. I've been into this problem for many years. I've defended my master thesis on patenting software and I thought that by the end I've done it. It was like 2009. We have almost 2016 I was sure that it's probably had to be settled but it's not and a guy who works at the Polish patent office he told me that maybe I would like to go once again into the subject because there are many new decisions the problem has not been solved and right now what I would like to do is to motivate you to call you for action because the situation needs to be changed and you're gonna see why and in which direction right now it's going to. All right what do we want to talk about with Benjamin here? We're still a little bit in a Christmas mood so this is a scene from Christmas carol as far as you know the Scrooge is being visited by the ghost of the past ghost of the present and ghost of the future. I'll tell you a little bit about the past and the present and probably something that Benjamin has to say combines the present situation with the future. All right how far we've come since the directive proposal you see the directive proposal this is this directive that was rejected by the European Parliament on well now that's the question on what was it because in Europe we tend to pretend that it was on something like computer implemented inventions I will tell you something about situation in the US and they purely call it like the software patents but in Europe it was called like computer implemented inventions and how far have you come from that where well then we were in the middle of nowhere because actually we didn't go anywhere some people say that okay so was it finished by 2005 so they rejected the directive so it means that they just said no to software patents we don't have any software patents in Europe and it's totally not true and while we're here in a black hole because nothing has happened good happen between these time gap Benjamin will tell you something more about unitary patent and this is something what would be really dangerous right now in that case when we'll be in 2016 it's up to you would like to suggest you to some actions I've been to a very brilliant speech of the guy that named Thomas from Save the Internet he described the ways that they undertook to fight for the free internet he said that some of the things he said it's too late for that so but let's don't beware because he finished like with keep fighting so this is what we're gonna do all right so how does European look like relating to software patents and I'm gonna just give you a brief speech from the legal point of view first of all we have a rapid patent convention that is the source of the mess you must remember that does not give you a pattern that is effective in all European countries this is only a bundle of patents this is very important because each national court each national officials may refuse grant in this pattern on the basis of European patent convention regarding for example the differences when it comes to patenting software and Benjamin tell you about this regulation introducing implementing enhanced cooperation so I would just skip it right now what's the problem with that first of all in the very basic version of European patent convention we didn't have anything about fields of technology for which the patents supposed to be granted it was something that was so-called obvious but it was that much obvious that nobody actually knew what it meant we lawyers tend to keep to the idea that the patents are only for the technology for something that may be verified by the experiment for something that it's connected in a tangible word not for mathematical or abstract idea so that was introduced in 2000 so that is pretty late because this is something that I'm telling you it's a very basic rule in patents all then we have exceptions from the patent protection and as you can see here in let us say we have programs from computers and this is what European patent convention says but then there is a problem because it says that they're not protected only as long as there are programs as such so it gives the false assumption that there are some computer programs that are patent table as some computers program that are not and when you read the patent claims that people who want to convince you that what they actually have it's not a software patent well this description is something like that they know that they do not sell meat but actually what is it nobody knows you can only imagine how it looks like this is the impression that I get when I read the patent claims and at first I thought this is my fault because I'm a lawyer I don't understand them but I consulted them and no one understands what they try and express apart from the fact that it's obvious they do not have the invention to have a software something and it tastes like chicken okay then in 2000 before the the directive was rejected of course that was after several years of implementing the action plan and the European Commission first of all told people told the citizens that they have to do something because this is what is required by the economy in the US and the common in Japan what they forgot to tell was that the attitude in US towards software patents has been changing and that the conclusions that they gave wasn't true anymore and they are not true right now so the European Commission said that since by the end of 2000 the EPO already granted 20 thousand thank you software patents it means that we need to change the law normally I would treat it as a confession that they did something against the law because the law said you may not grant the patent but they say okay that's a great argument let's introduce the software patent protection and this is something that they failed to do they also wanted to cross out this exception for computer programs from the European Patent Convention as the result of the fact that they already granted that many patents for software those two actions actually failed how actually European Patent Office deals with that kind of applications well they tried to convince you once again that this what is claimed this is not purely computer program this is something in between so at first they went with the attitude the approach that checked the technical contribution approach so if the solution gives up something to the technical aspects regardless whether it lies in software itself on in any different characteristic of invention that's still cool so we may grant the patent on the solution that it's purely software if we cross that out that's still be nothing actually new to the technical state now it evolved but actually the result is the same now the EPO goes with further technical effect what doesn't mean no one knows it means that software may produce a further technical effect why is it farther because it produced no technical effect while using the invention okay these are some examples you may go through what is technical in the eyes of EPOs and for example in Polish legislation we don't have as in many legislation this exclusion that patent cannot be granted only for software as such so our officials our court just say okay we don't have to apply that because we don't have it in our national law European Patent Convention is something that only allows you to get faster the protection in the countries that you indicate so this is only procedural stuff the thing if you get the patent or not depends on the local authorities what do we have here next the question the answer to it's supposed to be obvious can the president of EPO instruct national judges Kenny or she depending on their circumstances well we're supposed to say that no but there is a curious case of Polish cases but I'm truly convinced that it's not only what's happening in Poland I'm telling about Poland cases because this is something that I know from my practice from my legal practice and let's say my scientific activity what's happening in Poland and maybe happening right now in your country okay if you want to get a patent you go to the patent office of Republic of Poland if you're not pleased with the decision especially when you are Siemens Goggle or any huge company that the software patents was rejected then you can appeal to district administrative court and then the last chance supreme administrative court and what is going on right now in Poland at the at the first instance like patent office says this is what you're giving us it's nothing more but a pure software even though you're trying to convince us that it's not we don't grant you the patent we don't care that you've already have a European patent for that because we have our domestic legal provisions and we don't have that kind of exclusion as such we don't know it is as such as such I'm telling you not getting a patent so then it's getting higher instance district administrative court and usually those judges are totally in line with patent office they say yes we are truly convinced there were opinion of the experts this is not the invention we don't get a patent for that and then magic happens it goes to supreme administrative court and for the last few years this is what's happening first of all this is the one of the judgments but I could name many of them as you can see it's pretty fresh so there are some kind of instructions um they are not called instructions they are called justifications for the judgment and the justifications are that Polish patent office is obliged to follow EPOS understanding of invention of its technical character why because this is international agreement and it is superior to our national law the problem is that that would be true if that would be the same um the same matter that is regulated but European patent convention does not tell you about the content of the patent about what you can do this is just a procedural stuff the thing's going to be changed after unitary patent will come into force the Benjamin will talk about that right now the national authorities have still the power to say no and what's curious actually this is applied also to purely domestic cases to purely domestic cases when we even don't have the EPO patent evolved but because we are part of the European patent organization we supposed to follow that then they also say by the I mean the the judges of the supreme administrative court that EPOS reasoning is coherent with trips um I would like you to go to this website I recommend you because um there is a resolution that started by my Max Planck Institute um that explains that still the countries are independent of how they actually interpret the technical character they don't have to follow any imposers of international law they are free to do that so this is another lie and the final one um that Polish patent office is obliged to follow EPOS decisions and proceed according to guidelines for examination in the EPO so something that was designed for the internal use suddenly is write up as if that was any kind of source of law because the Polish judges says that we are obliged to do that because this is for the common good this is international thing let's make it clear that we do it the same way as the EPO does but no one judges if the EPOS okay or not with that okay how does it look like in US and I'm talking about that because as I told you at the beginning um the European Commission says that they had to introduce some changes some amendments to the European Patent Convention by ruling out the computer programs exception um because this is what US actually imposes on us so this is on what um the innovative technology is built in US um this looks a little bit different in US first of all they don't have any particular provision that would say that software patents are allowed um but there are of course much the big interest that say that that could be read in this provision where because it says that you can get a patent over a process but but that time when this provision was made no one ever thought about computer programs so this process is got nothing to do with the process that machine does according to the algorithm what they also have they don't have the legal exclusions but they have the case law so these are these are judicial exceptions to the four categories like this process processes manufacturing compositional matters if there's a law of nature natural phenomena or abstract idea then you don't get a patent and now the task of the judge is to look at the invention to look at the computer program to look at the business method um right now business methods are usually introduced by the use of software patents so sometimes they're combined with each other so someone has a way in which the business supposed to be conducted and introduce it through the software so it's like a double claim here look at this statistics they're pretty fresh because they are from the end of the october and as you can see here um the total invalid under this provision that says what maybe the subject to invention is pretty high and if you go to another statistics like 85 to 90 percent depending on the court um it's all about software or business methods so it means that US is no longer pro software patents this is false assumption telling that we have to change our European rule to give um equal chances to what's going on in America the thing that is going on in America are really surprising there is a brilliant guy he's called um John Oliver I wanted to post his video but I'm afraid that he's which stole the show so I wouldn't um just time into YouTube not right now um the last week show with John Oliver and he he tells there's something that I cannot tell whether it's true this is as if sometimes I read um political um description of what Polish government had done I have no idea is it true or is it not true did someone enter in the middle of the night of the night of the year I have no idea if it's true or not what actually he said he said that um American companies deduced that there is um in Texas um in one of the city there is a court that is very very um um well I don't know how even to call it that he understands the pain of the big companies and the jurors also do understand them so if you want to sue someone go there they don't have that many inhabitants but if you check how many actually lawsuits were brought them this is highly technological inventive city and the information that was passed and I cannot tell you whether it was true or not um there was a journalist inside of the in in front of the courthouse and she said look this is ice ring that was sponsored by Samsung so he could skate during um when there is no snow and there is no ice in front of the courtroom that was sponsored by Samsung is it true is it not I have no idea but if it's true um it's it's a very simple message go pro Samsung so you'd have to uh so so that would be easy for you to get the ice ring before the courthouse okay so this is the American attitude right now um usually you can go through that in that kind of um stages I don't want to go through that cases because probably know them um the thing is that the attitude has evolved it has changed from from the time that uh when the court said that it's enough if you give a new software to totally not new machine you get as a result of the invention okay but that was many years ago right now after the Bilski case after the Alice case um it's obvious that American courts really don't want to get a patent for abstract ideas and there are there are not that easy to be uh deceived okay so this is um the description of the cases you may go for the um for the presentation I want to waste time for that right now um what I want to also to tell you that that would be very important in European case what can we do about that um the great thing was done in US by the year 2012 there was a great conference why I call it great conference first of all a lot of people representing different uh different societies came there are different stakeholders not only lawyers who can tell whatever they want because well who cares if it doesn't have our application this is something that I'm um that can exist without any uh without any application I may see whatever I want but they also gathered that the program is they also gathered the representative or the huge um the huge technology of thing and they say that actually they go for the patents only to defend themselves they're not need them but if they see that that many people are getting patent um they also want to do that so these were um the solutions that are suggested I will skip to this getting great of all software patents I'm not saying that it's fair but at least we know one we're standing on right now the situation is not good because one may be great be granted a patent and the other may not this is something that is the worst for for the competition and I think um uh that this is something that we're supposed to oppose all right so are we helpless I would say that not and here we have some voice from the society that tells what's supposed to be done I highly uh recommend you to go to the Bundestag motion addressed to the German government they say they require from their government to um not to allow to give software patents just to focus on copyright protection and the very brand new decision resolution of December 17th on patents of bio the technological inventions as broccoli and tomatoes and if you go through this resolution of eb as you can see here it's exactly what we need in case of software patents because they want um to explain how all the provisions supposed to be understood and what Benjamin will talk about in a minute um how it's going to look like after the unitary patent coming to first because if it comes into force then the national judges wouldn't have any authority to decide whether the patent's supposed to be granted or not um the Polish the Polish approach towards this unitary patent has changed because from the very end to theistic and the beginning uh we went through the enhanced cooperation but at the very last moment Polish government just didn't sign the final papers but if he wishes to that there's open way so we need to do something just to tell people that it is important and it wasn't solved by the year of 2005 that the directive was rejected it doesn't mean that we don't have software patents uh in um in Europe all right so probably Benjamin would like to take the floor right now because I heard some ringing and probably it was addressed to me so the floor is yours uh the first slide normally there is a picture very important picture and it's not on the slides so um we have to do something about it but uh otherwise I try to take my computer do you have internet there or anti software stuff all right so so um I'm gonna start presenting myself um so I'm Benjamin Harion I'm from Brussels in Belgium and uh basically I started university uh in 1998 and uh that was the beginning of the internet the fast internet uh the university and uh I went on some websites uh translated into many languages uh that was asking a petition to uh commissioner Carol van Myrt uh who was uh uh commissioner for the internal market for a study on software patents and that was made by a person named uh Hardwood Pilsch Hardwood Pilsch uh is uh um the founder of DFI and uh uh that's how I became involved into software patents so um I then organized some conference with my Linux use group in my university inviting uh people who worked on the version 1.0 of the first attempt to to change the law regarding software patents in Europe and that's first change was uh trying to remove the word computer programs from the list of exceptions uh in the European patent convention so the patent community tried to do that uh via diplomatic conference like for any any uh international treaty you have to call for diplomatic conference where all the countries uh like Monaco or France or Germany have each one vote and uh they so uh Hardwood Pilsch and another Frenchman uh Jean-Paul Smetz managed to convince uh the delegation of France and other countries to oppose this removal of the word computer programs from the from the from the list of exceptions and uh so the diplomatic conference happened uh they managed to get through uh in 2000 a revision of the uh EPC to insert uh words from trips that says that patents should be granted for any field of technology and uh when you read the convention and you read this uh new uh thing you could say that there is a there might be a clash between the exceptions and the um and the uh I mean with those two articles so at the end the result of the EPC 2000 was that there was a huge frustration among the patent community to not being able to remove uh that exception uh to match the the the practice of the European patent office the European patent office has been granted software patents since uh mostly the first big decision uh administrative one was in 1986 uh where they started to grant software patents um so the the next step was to call uh this community wanted to to to uh to find another way and so they called they asked the European Commission to launch a process for having a European directive and this process lasted from 2000 to 2005 and that was the the period of uh software patents version 2.0 maybe I can try to get my slides um I will skip the the the picture um even though it was important so actually the picture I wanted to show you with someone ruined my presentation I I prefer PDF for a reason um so the the picture I wanted to show you is is is uh um we were we were in the European Parliament in July 2005 uh and there was another lobby from the big companies that rented a a yacht in the European Parliament so the European Parliament is two buildings with some river crossing in in in the in the middle and they wrote a yacht with a big banner a vote for uh CII a vote for uh software patents basically and uh on my side I was also helping to organize uh people with yellow t-shirts in front of the European Parliament so that uh we had like uh protesters in the in front of the of the Parliament and uh I was so upset by this boat that I managed to to call a friend of of mine who was in the uh in the in in the the the front of the European Parliament and uh I saw that there were some place to rent some kayaks and I asked him can you rent some kayaks and and kick me that boat so they took uh they took some banners uh saying software patents skill innovation and they went with uh two three kayaks uh fighting against that yacht and uh so at that moment that moment the decision of the European Parliament was already uh already kind of done not the vote was not the vote was not done but the the crucial moment was uh the uh the other side the big corporation asked for uh dropping the the vote on this issue and they asked for uh a new uh European patent court so I was I was very surprised because uh to my opinion it's it's uh if they cannot change the law they cannot change the law the problem is in this case is that you have at least uh seven or eight different interpretation of the what the law means and so it depends on the judge uh it depends on the judge what what what is going to be the interpretation so actually now uh uh in 2005 the the plan for what is now becoming the European patent was already uh the the third version of software patents in Europe which is not having not reopening the software patent debate but having uh setting up a court system upon European court system which is outside of the structure of nations outside of uh uh even Europe uh the European Union itself so and uh at that time I don't know if I can uh go find my slides back so the the that was a press release that was uh published by ECTA which was regrouping the the Microsoft IBM and others and uh you you had to have uh a look on what they they published it was clear that their plan uh at the time was already to prepare uh a call for European patent court so they said uh we're going to look at how to improve the patent system for everybody in another in another way um so uh this court is on a website called epla.ffi.org and that's uh basically uh when we were talking about uh this directive in Brussels there was a representative of the EPO uh David Sant who is now working as a patent attorney in London filing software patents or at least helping them uh and he said yeah we don't need uh we don't need this debate about software patents we just need a unified patent litigation system uh because if we have this uh unified patent litigation system uh we don't have any difference between uh UK or Germany if they interpret the convention differently no we have we have a central court that's gonna decide and it creates a single point of failure a single point of reference where we know the interpretation uh for sure okay um so this is a screenshot from the so uh after um the directive there was uh six months just after the directive there was a commission relaunching uh consultation about patents how to improve patents uh and uh there was like a huge uh um huge submissions from small software companies that participating to the directive and uh the outcome of the this consultation was the relaunch of a uh a treaty uh that was negotiated back before which is what's called EPLA the European patent litigation agreement and the European patent litigation agreement was a clone of the EPC but for courts so uh in Europe you have for the grant parts you have the EPO which is granting those national patents in a in a central way but those national patents they still have to be litigated by country country by country you don't have a court system which is doing this the the the same role as the EPO but for enforcing the patents um so this uh EPLA treaty was uh coming from the EPO circles and uh so they they discussed that uh option to sign uh having an EPLA in back in 2007 and that was mostly rejected because uh France and other countries said yeah but how does that fit with the European Union system how does that play with the European Court of Justice and so um they make uh they made uh France said we we have constitutional problems we cannot sign this treaty and uh so they made another version and another version uh it became the your UPLS the European uh the union patent litigation system um and uh so they they kind of made several versions through the years up to a point where uh they had some kind of things that could be called compatible with the role of the European Court of Justice and uh so what happened is that they uh they signed uh something back in 2012 which is called the Unitary Patent and the Unitary Patent Court which is formed out of three regulations uh that has to be ratified by each national parliament in each country and the status it it is now that eight countries have ratified uh by heart uh uh France uh Denmark Portugal uh Malta and some others but the main two countries uh that has to ratify in order for the treaty to enter in force the main two countries are UK and Germany and those two countries have not ratified yet. One of the issue is the Brexit in the UK because if the uh so the question is whether they put the ratification before the Brexit or after the Brexit and the second uh question is if the UK uh goes for Brexit what happens with the treaty because it says uh that's a separate discussion um yeah so what I wanted to say is that uh this uh screen capture comes from the website of the European Parliament where it's a QA about the 2012 agreement that was signed in December and they said that they have a FAQ and they said uh yeah can you can you can suffer if I attended and joined the new rules and they said no uh and when I read that I was like okay uh they fault I mean it's propaganda and they fell into the to some trap um so this is a tweet from uh conference uh recent conference in London where the representative of VPO said uh said basically yeah the European patent court will provide strong harmonization for uh for ICT or software and we play a dominant role uh in the patent world so that's the fact I wanted to show contrast between how the legislation is sold how it's uh how they sell it to people and what it means in reality after it has been adopted they say yeah it's it's about software patent um so a small initiative that I made uh back in March uh in Belgium we have a very interesting country with three official languages mostly uh uh German, French and Dutch and um there's a special case where uh a patent granted to a German company got granted in Belgium uh without any translation to uh French and Dutch and it was declared valid for the whole country even if most people in Belgium don't speak German um so there is uh already in the law in Belgium very strange things about uh validity of uh uh translations and the main goal of the unitary patent on the ground side is to remove uh uh mandatory translations for patents so actually the big cost of uh when you apply for a patent and you want the 27 member states of the EU it's very costly because you have to translate in a legalese words uh in each language and they made the DPO made a partnership with Google so that they can have automatic translation of of patents and that's actually what is in the regulation uh the the council regulation is that they have a 10 year period where they input they uh they start with the system where uh companies uh have legally binding versions in English and non legally binding automated translation with Google translate uh with a non legal effect so they created a new law that says uh without automatic translation without any legal validity is okay um so if you google for the the the challenge I raised three important points the first was uh languages as a as a french native speaker of course I felt a bit uh offenced by the fact that I don't have a legally binding version and I have to build a business on that um so the the Spain also made an appeal to the to the European court of justice against the unitary patent on five or six points and one of the point was the language uh translations I mean uh I do have a girlfriend who is Spanish and uh I've been to the family in Spain and they mostly only speak Spanish um the the court says yeah it's perfectly fine if you discriminate people and have this automated uh language translation system for the unitary patent and uh basically they they said they give the green lights to uh the unitary patent in uh for that issue another interesting point a legal point was the you have those three uh regulations and then you have the rules of procedure of the court um and I was in a conference uh back in the end of 2014 where uh representative of Microsoft was lobbying for uh some rules on the thresholds for injunction so thresholds for injunction is um whether you can freeze some assets whether you can uh the judge can decide to stop the the the for example the xbox being sold in Germany and things like that and uh he he was very surprised because he was lobbying people who who were not politicians he was lobbying people who who were an administrative committee but who had the power to write some rules and uh afterwards uh I I engaged with a lawyer who was uh very critical on that point because he said yeah normally rules of what's here for a court are decided and accepted by parliaments so uh in in the unitary patent you have a committee drafting 130 pages of legal rules and uh that's mostly lawyers and judges that even writes the the the the rules for their own future court and there's something there with I was not very comfortable and I found uh very because uh the um the the IPO cannot be attacked in court for what they do um and so the the rule uh it's called in English the rule of law uh in French is leta de droits and uh the rule of law uh says there is there should be an instant institutional system where the public authority uh is uh regulated by law so unfortunately this appeal was rejected because there's a differentiation in Belgium between uh appeals for against normal law and against international treaties and we filed it just the last day of the six months but actually it was six weeks so uh our appeal was was rejected but I'm looking at uh other countries like Portugal where it's uh way easier uh there's no constraint on how you can file uh uh something against the constitutional court and I'm also looking at uh forming a group of lawyers and experts on how to bring those three points uh to the open court of human rights in Strasbourg but for that I might need to uh raise a bit of money in the future in the near future uh yes some crowdfunding or something um okay so what is going on right now with DPO is there there is some crisis going on because uh I don't know if you read some news or at least if you are interested there is a very interesting blog called tech rights uh where uh many people in the in the staff of DPO are very upset about new staff rules uh pushed by the president of DPO and there's an ongoing strikes every two weeks uh the the work atmosphere is not very good there there are people who committed suicides and uh so the atmosphere there is not is not great uh and there's uh many people they are afraid they they they they have key loggers on their computers uh the management is trying to spy everything they do to avoid leaks uh so I wanted to mention a very small point here which is another uh angle of attack for against the unitary patent is that they are uh it's article 142 of the European patent convention and they mentioned here that they kind of solve the problem of enhanced cooperation with the council regulation so uh if you are a specialist in international law normally you you are able to to have an agreement in international law not using EU law to fix international law because that's for Spain if they want to go forward um so the the future the near future is that I'm preparing something on the legal side but I would be very uh I would be very interested if some other people join to wake up the coalition uh in countries such as Germany uh UK or even other countries where the EPC is not yet ratified because there's evidence that uh this court is is not made for people it's made for the patent system and it's going to contribute to the to the patent inflation to the to the patent warming the global patent warming of more patents cheaper patents uh patents for more fields patents for software patents for biotech uh patents for medical uh uh medical treatments uh medical it's called there's no medical techniques um and uh there is a need for uh getting to your parliament and say look uh we have some problems with this unitary patent monster um so I wanted to give the floor to Andre so Andre is the secretary of FFI and he made an initiative which is uh he called for uh a petition at the EU level to integrate the EPO inside the European Union system so I wanted to give him the floor for uh for one or two minutes I don't know but no you can do it without the slide no no the file yeah I know but maybe you have to speak in the microphone there switch on the microphone yeah okay does it work yeah okay uh so um many of the problems that are very technical and maybe very abstract for people not working in the field of patents um boiled down to governance issues governance issues within the patent system and um out of these governance issues whether you're pro patent or anti patent or reject patents in certain fields or uh satisfied with the patent system or not um there should be some window for reform for the ability of the lawmaker to somehow influence the process and during the last 20 years there was this tendency within the patent system to shield itself from the political process from the democratic process and it's going further and further and one of the main points of this unitary patent court is that it's like judiciary without a legislative correction branch so the european parliament cannot change what the judiciary then decides and that's somehow against basic principles of governance so uh regardless how we see the issue of software patents we want to somehow bring this institution the european patent office back into the EU system because the EU system is very well developed and the epo is say it's a treaty organization from the 19 in the 1960s 1970s style so there's no parliamentary oversight and so on so i just filed a petition to the european parliament and i got confirmation like two months ago that was accepted so my the substance of my petition in short is first of all i want the european parliament to have the ability to send questions to the european patent office or its administrative council that's governing the epo so how do we get parliament oversight of the epo right now if they write to the commission or to the council they say but this is not an EU institution we can't do it so the way to do it very simply is the european parliament can independently with the epo um try to get an inter-institutional agreement so my petition is about asking the european parliament to start a negotiation process with the european patent office to start um do you have it online to get on the screen can you put it online i don't know how to do okay put the screen there and there okay doesn't matter so um yeah my so according to me the european patent office is an international european institution which does not fall under EU law which is right he proposes that the EU contacts the epo in order to conclude an inter-institutional agreement that would enable the members of the european parliament your select elected representatives in european parliament to address parliamentary questions to the epo and improve the parliamentary supervision of the epo the petitioner that's me also asked the european commission to harmonize national substantive patent law so that patent law becomes part of the aki common no common no tear what does it mean well the european software patents directive was rejected and there's no european patent law there's just national patent law and then we have the european patent office that centralized in the 70s the granting of patents and then became like the de facto institution deciding what's patentable or not but that's not really the point behind this european patent convention so my idea is there should be a directive on european level that at least harmonizes patent law like the status quo not specifically addressing software patents just the law so it's on the european level and you harmonize all the national laws because then actually the european union the european commission gets in charge because it's part of the so-called aki community that's again a very technical term but it basically means everything that's regulated on the EU level and uh yeah because the major differences that still exist poland has a completely different law than germany and this would then enable actually on the european side that we are able to balance the different areas of patent law with say competition law with standardization because it's all on the same level um yeah um and the epo which is just the patent office it cannot deal oh sorry uh it cannot deal with all these differences in de facto harmonizer so um and yeah i guess it's good for the balance of powers and um it would strengthen also the international negotiating position of the european union in matters of patent law with respect to third parties like on the international global level with vipo the splt trips and in trade fora so uh my petition the name of my petition oops my petition has a number and that's two three seven zero 2014 so when you just remember this a 23 70 slash 2014 that's that's the name of my petition then you can you are able to support my petition by writing to the petition committee of the european parliament say wow this is a good idea and i also have these experiences with european parliament and uh let's do something about it and i guess it would be very helpful to get some public support for my petition um and when they see in the european parliament that there's a lot of attention to this proposal for an institutional reform which just leads to sane governance not resolve the the issue of of software patterns just moves a bit to sane governance um yeah then i would say um there's a process now where you can inject your stuff without a process we can talk sit in a room but there's there's nothing right now that can be done and maybe then we will get hearings we'll get some experts discussions when there's a huge public interest in my petition so just remember the number 23 70 slash uh 2014 and uh i would uh very much welcome if you write some letters in support to the petition committee of the european parliament under this uh subject thank you thank you very much Iga and Benjamin if you have questions please line up at the microphones we have around seven minutes for a few questions if we have them are there questions from the internet yes i have a question um it is um is there a differentiation between the patentability of computer software and mere mathematical formulas like for example there's um compression algorithms for for music for example every three was patented well um i've heard about few solutions of that kind but the question is that they um actually give patents for the solutions that you once known about and this is like first come first served so probably in that case is you're supposed to look for that that sort of pattern so not particular compression but probably in the in that part um so actually in the european patent convention you have a another item for the exclusion of algorithms as an abstract matter so yeah purely an abstract matter but when it comes to let's say if you if you implement in the form of computer program you fall let's say the pure mathematical is not patentable but if you implement it in the form of software then it becomes patentable because the epo says it's patentable despite the exclusion of computer programs so yeah for me it's abstract matter so and all those exclusions in the epc are all about abstract matters like mathematics like idea concepts like way of conduct there's mathematics presentation of information like we computer programs and business methods methods for doing business so all those things have one thing in common is that they are abstract and that makes the reference to the current discussion in alice in the u.s. that they all say it's an abstract idea but yeah but it's abstract so that's a criteria that the supreme cause kind of used to say those matters should be excluded so they have something in common the fact that epo makes an expression for software and even other fields get attacked because if you look at the epo jurisprudence on on guise on graphical user interface they also grant patents for let's say dragging a mouse and an icon somewhere on the screen so even other other exceptions are getting attacked question from the front right microphone yeah thank you well thank you for your presentation it's a very complex issue a nice supportive idea but i would like to if i may clarify the answer to the question thank you well algorithms as such are not patentable but in case of mp3 if you have an algorithm well software that solves certain technical problem in a technical way with the issue you also try then it's patentable that's that was the case with mp3 and many other software but well i have a couple of issues well to your anecdotal case from texas is true really i can't recall the name of the city but something like that yeah could be because the company i work for we have american lawyers who also told us about the situation in samsung and apple because they meet there very often so you know they have to entertain himself in a certain manner yeah and i would like to point out a very i think important issue in a unitary substantive law because you focused your presentation on procedural matters in case of granting software but there is in the upc agreement in article 27 letter key um well i i conduct research on patent exceptions and i also focus on this and there is a provision on interoperability which as such concern well source code and software as such but lawmakers for some reason included this in clearly patent patent law and i think this is also very troublemaking issue and instead of clarifying the situation it spells only troubles and well if you have any comments because i have i can continue interoperability is about protocols and fire formats yeah but this okay yeah but this is software like pure software and now you have this in also in patents law in material patent law so i think this is an issue because actually it would imply if you if you make an exception we had the same debate during the the software patent directive we we had read that and and the ibm pushing for interoperability exception because if they they saw like if the direct is adopted it's a full back position to have to diminish the impact of software patents and the fact that it's in the UPC is a bit worrying because it means that they imply that software is patentable but they have interoperability exception yes exactly and do you have beside the petition do you have any other ideas to to you know to make further steps in your action because i would see the further steps is either we try we i try or other people try to recreate some some some coalitions of industry in Germany in the UK to block the ratification and i think that should be the first step for me the legal steps are just they can be done in the future in after that but when you have when you are in a war you have some some bullets to shoot and it's better to shoot the first bullet and this is the first bullet fails you still have the second one well if i may add something the problem is that these amendments got really huge it's not like one provision and gonna change this is something like starting work from the bottom and i don't want to say that it's too late for that because it wasn't the case like people didn't do anything because it was you know some kind of activities during the years but i'm thinking that that's the main problem that this is not like the one provision you take out and you may come up with a conclusion or may come up with a solution because this is the easiest way of dialogue yeah we want that kind of change we want to change actually almost everything and that won't change your mindset yeah so that's why it's so problematic not it's not simple to to address a given action so it's need to be complex okay i would give we have another question from the front left microphone so i have a question with regard to the 20 000 patents you mentioned before how do we attack those because they are still persistent and they may still also yeah prevent companies for for coming into business i see here a another challenge on maybe on a case by case base just to say okay all of those patents we have to tackle somehow and to get rid of it well some of these patents that were mentioned these were on the statistic by the end of 2000 because that was the time when the european commission entered into plan their action plan so hopefully maybe some of them are just expired by now what the experience show is that you may attack that kind of patent but usually depending on the court they would just say that okay this is technical that was what you actually also mentioned about this technical effect technical function of software there are many people who doubt that because if something is purely non-technical it cannot have any kind of technical aspects that was the main problem when they started to say that patent law it's not about protection of technical solutions to technical problems but also using non-technical ways to resolve some kind of problem that could be described as technical so nowadays the statistic in europe are not that good in us it's better as you saw because there were almost like as i noticed this is like 85 up to 90 that was the invalidation on the basis that that was abstract method business method or software but i also mentioned that nowadays it's combined it's usually you need a software to introduce this innovative business matter so the more money you have the better you come up with and the main problem is which you are probably aware of that sometimes they just sue for fun even though they know you're going to lose the costs are so huge and when they're introduced when they're first introducing this unitary patent system they say we have to do that because it's going to be cheaper right now to get the patent protection but for whom cheaper that's the first question and then they didn't take into consideration all the litigation and of course i'm from country where the innovative in terms of patent application is very very low and as you see for the whole european union map these countries who are the most developed will will you know just gain them all so actually when you look at europe in terms of number of software patents per country all the american big companies they go uh france uk germany and other countries like poland mostly they are not concerned about those patents but the problem with unitary patents is that instead of filing for those three countries they're going to have the 27 countries for free so all the countries let's say hungary or even belgium one suddenly will get a will get a an extension of of more patents because they're going to be cheaper because they they they're going to cover the whole european union at once so this problem of of patent inflation that is very visible in the united states because there's a lot of litigation around them is going to come with the unitary unitary patent because that's the objective of the of the low maker is to get cheaper patents and uh enforceable much more easier and so on so the the the troll phenomena that you see in the u.s they are all all the ingredients are here with the unitary patent to have the same effect okay and the last remark they are very hard to detect these software patents because since officially you don't get a patent over software methods you don't have a given category uh among which you may make research faults so probably there are lots of software patents they are not called software patents and you cannot even detect them so the numbers are also maybe not reflecting the reality i'm afraid we're all out of time thank you very much iga and benjamin if you have any further questions