FICPI Demands Unlimited Patentability Worldwide

(Forwarded from Patents list.  Methinks the reason FICPI is
getting more audacious of late is because they know they
have to act fast, or opposition will make its voice heard
even more loudly than it has been of late.  -- Seth)

-------- Original Message --------
Date: Thu, 19 Dec 2002 23:16:00 +0100 (CET)
From: PILCH Hartmut <phm@a2e.de>
To: patents@aful.org

The world alliance of patent lawyer associations

 
http://www.ficpi.org/ficpi/newsletters/51/PosPaperSPLT_1.html

demands that Art 27 TRIPs may not and "was never meant to"
be interpreted in a "restrictive" way, i.e. in a way that
treats the concepts "invention", "technical", "industrial"
etc as limitations on what can be patented.  The new
Substantive Patent Law Treaty, which is being prepared by
WIPO, should, according to FICPI (and according to the US
delegation at WIPO), impose worldwide patentabilty of
anything useful.  According to FICPI there is "no reason" to
limit patentability, and in particular the ever-growing
importance of the service sector should be taken account of
by making patents available for this sector.

It is interesting to see FICPI taking such extreme positions
in public. Normally the tactic has been to continue using
"industry" and "technical" in order to hide the real
intentions.   One may wonder why the FICPI resolution
drafters believe that such hiding is less necessary now than
a few years ago.

-- 
Hartmut Pilch, FFII & Eurolinux Alliance              tel.
+49-89-12789608
Protecting Innovation against Patent Inflation	    
http://swpat.ffii.org/
130,000 signatures against software patents     
http://www.noepatents.org/

Received on Friday, 20 December 2002 10:53:51 UTC