Expert Warns Over US Style 'Wild West' Software Patent Regime For Europe

by Robin Pilgrim, LawAndTax-News.com, London

06 June 2003

Writing in the UK's Guardian on Thursday, founder of the GNU Project and the Free Software Foundation, Richard Stallman urged EU authorities to resist pressure from big business to allow a patent software regime to develop in the EU, warning that:

'The computer industry is threatened by a wild-west style land grab. The biggest, richest players are being assisted by governments to take unassailable, exclusive control of the ideas that programmers combine to make a program.'

He went on to suggest that development of new technologies is being stifled by the system of software patenting in the United States, which has been in place for more than twenty years.

Arguing that only large organisations which hold a substantial number of patents can actually afford to write new software and develop new technologies - given that the average cost of defending an invalid patent claim in the US has been estimated at $1.5 million - Mr Stallman revealed that:

'Software patents are being claimed at a tremendous rate in the US. If they become legal in Europe, most of those taken out in the US may also be enforceable here. This is likely to have a devastating effect on the local software industry. This will lead to job losses, a poorer economy, more expensive software, and less choice for the consumer.'

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