Ljubljana Teleinfos Software Patent Conference 2004-04-22

Here is a short summary of the 22 April 2004 Conference on software patents in Ljubljana.

About the conference

The conference was organized by :

• Stranka Mladih Slovenije (the Youth party of Slovenia)
• European Greens
• Foundation for a Free Information Infrastructure (FFII)

The programme can be found here

Greetings

• FFII (particularly H. Blasum and H. Pilch)
• all people from LUGOS (slovenian Linux users group)
• Laurence Van de Walle & Darko Krajnc

Three Non-slovenian speakers

• B. Henrion, representing AEL, talked about why software patents are abd for software in general, where do we go ith this directive. The slides of his presentation are posted here:http://bh.udev.org/filez/swpat/Ljubljana22april04/html/img0.html
• S. Perchaud, in charge of proprietary software at FFII and president of Europe Shareware
• R. M. Stallman, president of the Free Software Foundation

Slovenian speakers

U Mesojedec (Monitor Magazine, Slovenia)

introduced the audience to software patents. He explained why you can't distinguish between mathematics and software, patenting software algorithms means you patent mathematics. He also said that applying non- obviousness criteria to software is a very difficult task. Another point of his speech was that lawsuits compel SMEs to settle or go out of business.

A Kosir (LUGOS)

explained how free software would be terribly harmed if sofware patents were made legal. How the European Council of Ministers "compromise" is even worse than the EU Commission draft directive. Why the EU Parliament amendments have to be supported.

G Perenic (Perenic svetovanje d.o.o.)

explained why software patents create so many legal problems, why there are so many "junk" patents granted, how legal insecurity would impact day-to-day business.

M Kranjc (Ministry of Information Society of Slovenia)

very interesting speech. Explained that currently his ministry doesn't want software patents "as such" (noticeable precision), that such patents aren't good at all for SMEs and even cause some problems for large companies, that it is not a problem between proprietary vs free software (he wasn't fooled by this myth). Moreover he said that improving of somebody else ideas was always part of the innovation process in the software market and that proprietary software publishers should take care of the software patents debate. He seems, at least, very skeptic about any benefit from introducing software patents in Europe.

Sylvain Perchaud

was a speaker on the second panel "The draft directive on computer- implemented invention's economic impact". Sylvain's speech explained that Europe lacks a strong venture capitalism (an important factor in the Silicon Valley's success) and that introducing software patents would probably make things worse.

In a few points, here is what Sylvain said :

• Europe has lots of promising software in strategic markets, especially as shareware (Opera for browsers, oXygen for XML editors...).
• you need funds to start your company and pay your employees during the development (that means that during a 6-24 months period you don't sell any product but you have costs to pay).
• it is very difficult to have a strong european venture capitalism since they are too many problems :
  • no tax harmonisation. As a result venture capitalists can't compare the profitability of each startup at the european level. It makes benchmarking very difficult. Almost all VC funds are based in London (no tax for VC here), so they invest in local companies.
  • no good expertise. European venture capitalists traditionnaly invest in biotech or pharma, they have a low understanding of the software market.
  • no accountability standard (IAS/IFRS is coming).
  • no large stock market for IPO.
  • some european countries (mainly south european countries) don't invest enough in software while scandinavian countries are catching up with the USA. It is very difficult to do venture capitalism on a European level, still better to work on a national level.
  • administrative processes are too different from one european country to another to create a company.

Main conclusion:

• Europe should focuss its efforts on harmonisation (tax, regulation), not on tax competition which makes european benchmarking impossible.
• European software publishers are still small or medium-sized (compared to their US competitors). Adding software patents means importing costly lawsuits in Europe, this could be a very dangerous move since our air- supply (money from VC funds) is already low. Software patents would deter venture capitalists from investing in european software startups.

General impression on the conference

The organisation was good, I would even say very good since the organisers only had a few weeks to prepare everything from scratch.

The moderator, Andraz Tori (a slovenian TV presentor), was particularly good at driving the debate and asking the good questions to politicians and stakeholders during the round table.

We hope now that the Slovenian government will consider the position of slovenian software companies and resist pressure coming from non-european multinationals.