Source: http://www.visaepatentes.com/2011/01/
Timestamp: 2017-10-19 09:08:49
Document Index: 768562005

Matched Legal Cases: ['Art. 14', '§ 50', '§ 34', '§ 35', '§ 42', '§ 45', '§ 46', '§ 48']

Visae Patentes: January 2011
EU Parliament's Legal Affairs Committee (JURI) Gave Consent to Enhanced Cooperation Today
[MEP Klaus-Heiner Lehne, Chairman onf Legal Affairs Committee]
On 13 December 2010, a qualified majority of 23 EU member states (all but Spain, Italy, the Czech Republic, and Cyprus) agreed to implement a 'small' EU patent by way of enhanced cooperation (see earlier posting), based on a legislative proposal of the EU Commission (press release) basically adopting the EPO language regime (Art. 14 EPC), according to which the EU patent would be examined and granted (by the EPO) in English, French or German. Further, machine translations would be provided for the remaining national EU languages.
According to this press release, the Legal Affairs Committee (JURI) of the European Parliament today gave its consent to the use of enhanced cooperation to create the EU patent, as proposed in the report prepared by the JURI committee's chairman, German MEP Klaus-Heiner Lehne (EPP), who decided to go ahead with the vote without waiting for the juridical opinion of the legal service (see yesterday's IPJur posting).
Next, the Parliament's legal service is expected to publish their legal opinion on enhanced cooperation in teh beginning of February, so that the European Parliament can vote on the proposal mid February. The Competitiveness Council will examine the proposal on 10 March 2011.
Due to a number of remaining unresolved issues, this fast-track approach has received quite some critisism. In fact, enhanced cooperation is a completely unusual procedure which has not yet been used for European core issues, such as internal market policy. Some observers say that with regard to vested interests of French and German industry, it is not a coincidence that Frenchman Michel Barnier (Internal Market Commissioner) and German Klaus-Peter Lehne (JURI chairman) are accelerating the process to an unprecedented efficiency record (see yesterday's EurActiv posting).
posted by Volker 'Falk' Metzler on 1/27/2011 0 Comments
Labels: enhanced co-operation, EU Commission, EU Patent, JURI
As Open Source Flagships Attack CPTN/Novell Patent Deal, Some OSS Advocates Take More Pragmatic Positions
[US Department of Justice, home of the Antitrust Division; via Wikimedia]
In the course of the announced purchase of 822 Novell patents by CPTN Holdings LLC - a consortium of Microsoft, Apple, EMC, and Oracle - as a part of Novell's merger into Attachmate Corporation (see press release), the Open Software Initiative (OSI) lodged a complaint with the Bundeskartellamt (German Federal Cartel Office) against an announced "notified merger project", i.e. the request of the four software heavyweights to establish a patent consortium (see posting). CPTN has withdrawn their request a couple of days later for "procedural" reasons, rather than in reaction to OSI's complaint (see posting).
On the level of European competition law, apparently, no concerns exist about CPTN's patent transaction, as reported on the FOSSpatents blog. On 20 December 2010 British conservative MEP Emma McClarkin submitted a written question to the EU Commission in which she raised that
this [patent] move strengthens the hold Microsoft has over its competitors, which could potentially harm consumer choice and increase prices. Is the Commission aware of this situation? If so, does the Commission believe there have been any infractions by Microsoft of EU competition laws?
Joaquín Almunia, EU Competition Commissioner, responded on 17 January 2011 that
it appears unlikely that the proposed transaction requires a notification to the Commission under the Merger Regulation. Furthermore, [...] the Commission has currently no indication that the mere acquisition of the patents in question by CPTN Holdings would lead to an infringement of EU competition rules.
As opposed to the positions taken by OSI and FSFE, prominent anti-patent campaigner Florian Müller "couldn't find any real substance" in their complaints:
Those complaints came down to indicating a dislike for patents and distrust for the companies behind CPTN Holdings. But they didn't raise any legal issues that would be specific to this deal.
He pragmatically concluded that "politicians don't stop patent offices from granting them. So let's come to terms with it: this is the law of the land". Such status-quo-preserving observations are not self-evident for a leading figure of the successful no-software-patents campaign against the adoption of the Computer Implemented Inventions Directive in 2005, a piece of EU legislation that was intended to bring an EU-wide harmonisation of the treatment of so called computer-implemented inventions. In fact, Müller now takes the somewhat adapted position (see e.g. this posting) that "[s]oftware patents are a fact of life [; t]heir abolition isn't achievable" and now appears to advocate for some sort of cooperation between FOSS and the software patent world:
FOSS must find ways to deal with patents, and in fact, it already has. In particular, it must continue to find constructive and realistic ways rather than just insist that patent holders waive all rights. [...] If the FOSS side and the patent side are both reasonable, the combination of both works without problems.
Back in October 2010, Joff Wild, editor of the widely recognised IAM magazine, supported Müller's views in a posting headlined "anti-software campaigner changes his mind" and recommended:
[R]ather than bang their heads against a brick wall and make all kinds of demands that no-one is going to take seriously, it makes sense for the open source movement to do just as Mueller suggests and to find an accommodation with patent owners. As he also warns, those elements of the movement that refuse to compromise will just end up making themselves irrelevant.
One recent example of such pointlessly banging heads to wrong walls was the campaign against the USPTO's new Interim Guidance (see press release and earlier posting) for determining patent eligibility in view of the Supreme Court's Bilski opinion, in which the Free Software Foundation (FSF) almost desperately invited their followers to "encourage the USPTO to stop issuing software patents" by writing "to the USPTO [...] and tell them that their new guidance should include a strong stand against software patents". This dubious e-mail campaign was criticised by Müller (and patent attorneys) as a spamming strategy doomed to fail from the beginning, which immediately provoked agonizing questions among open source activists such as "Has FOSS lost the battle?" or "What is Florian's strategy?".
Meanwhile, leading open source lobbying organisations OSI and FSF continue to fight the CPTN/Novell patent deal (their collaboration has been celebrated as "unprecedented" by OSI board member Simon Phipps), this time before the Antitrust Division of the US Department of Justice, which OSI/FSF tries to urge "to investigate the CPTN transaction thoroughly and consider appropriate remedies" by a joint position statement being essentially identical to the complaint lodged with the German FCO (see also reports on H blog and PCWorld).
Before the US Antitrust Division, a third party may either report antitrust concerns by a rather informal inquiry or formally request a business review according to the Business Review Procedure under 28 C.F.R. § 50.6. The joint statement appears to be of the more informal type, since it fails to reasonably express legal (antitrust) issues but instead raises political and rather idealistic points, based on the general concern "that CPTN Holdings may use these patents to attack FLOSS software". The joint OSI/FSF statement basically addresses
the competitiveness of open source software and its role as "credible competitor to traditional proprietary software" (items 1 to 3);
that CPTN has recognised open source software as "the major competitive force to their business" (item 4);
assumptions that the CPTN transaction has been conducted in secrecy to hide "nefarious intentions" (item 5), and
that "CPTN has all motives to launch patent attacks against companies delivering solutions based on [open source software]" (item 6).
My guess is that this attempt to discredit the patent ecosystem and CPTN member companies by unsubstantiated allegations as to their "nefarious intentions" and aggressive motives will probably not urge antitrust authorities to act against the CPTN/Novell transaction. The celebrated "unprecedented collaboration to protect software freedom" may, however, turn out to be appropriate to obtain reasonable press coverage and to motivate existing and acquire new followers for the movement.
Instead, it would have been a much better contribution for the open source idea to accept that patents are not a crime but a legitimate property right and business model and to better follow a more creative and collaborative agenda, e.g. an "if-you-cant-beat-em-join-em" strategy, as sketched by Eben Moglen, Chairman of the Software Freedom Law Center, in a LinuxCon keynote in view of the "Bilski shock" (see e.g. ArsTechnica), based on the old but pragmatic open patent idea, as implemented e.g. by the Open Inventor Network or the Open Patent Alliance. This would at least be an option to prevent that "those elements of the movement [...] will just end up making themselves irrelevant", as Joff Wild put it in his above-mentioned article.
posted by Volker 'Falk' Metzler on 1/26/2011 0 Comments
Labels: antitrust, CPTN Holdings, EU Commission, FCO, Florian Müller, Free Software Foundation, Joff Wild, Microsoft, Novell, open patent, Open Software Initiative, US Antitrust Division
posted by Volker 'Falk' Metzler on 1/17/2011 0 Comments
I thus feel that I have to mention at least briefly the recent decision of the European Court of Justice in case C-393/09 (BSA vs. Ministry of Culture of the CR), which is dealing with copyright protection of graphical user interfaces (GUI). The headnote of the Court's judgement reads:
1. A graphic user interface is not a form of expression of a computer program within the meaning of Article 1(2) of Council Directive 91/250/EEC of 14 May 1991 on the legal protection of computer programs [the so called Software Directive, now replaced by Directive 2009/24/EC] and cannot be protected by copyright as a computer program under that directive. Nevertheless, such an interface can be protected by copyright as a work by Directive 2001/29/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council of 22 May 2001 on the harmonisation of certain aspects of copyright and related rights in the information society [the so called Copyright Directive] if that interface is its author’s own intellectual creation.
As elaborately explained on the Bright Spark blog, the ECJ was exclusively discussing a GUI as an interface, i.e. as a means by which the user can interact with his computer.
In a first step, the ECJ negated copyright protection of GUI's under Directive 91/250, since Article 1(2) of that Directive grants copyright protection "to the expression in any form of a computer program" while the ECJ concluded
that the source code and the object code of a computer program are forms of expression thereof which, consequently, are entitled to be protected by copyright as computer programs (§ 34). Accordingly, the object of the protection conferred by that directive is the expression in any form of a computer program which permits reproduction in different computer languages, such as the source code and the object code (§ 35).
It follows that interface does not constitute a form of expression of a computer program within the meaning of Article 1(2) of Directive 91/250 and that, consequently, it cannot be protected specifically by copyright in computer programs by virtue of that directive (§ 42).
In a second step the ECJ examined whether computer GUIs are copyright protected by virtue of Directive 2001/29 and found that
copyright within the meaning of Directive 2001/29 is liable to apply only in relation to a subject-matter which is original in the sense that it is its author’s own intellectual creation (§ 45). Consequently, the graphic user interface can, as a work, be protected by copyright if it is its author’s own intellectual creation (§ 46).
A final conclusion is then drawn under § 48:
When making that assessment, the national court must take account, inter alia, of the specific arrangement or configuration of all the components which form part of the graphic user interface in order to determine which meet the criterion of originality. In that regard, that criterion cannot be met by components of the graphic user interface which are differentiated only by their technical function.
For more detailed information on and critical discussions of this matter you may refer to Hu'ko's blog (here, here, and here), the IPKat (here and here), or the 1709 blog (here, here, here, and here).
posted by Volker 'Falk' Metzler on 1/15/2011 0 Comments
Labels: copyright, Directive 2009/24/EC, Directive 91/250/EEC, ECJ, graphical user interface, GUI
CPTN Withdraws Request to Establish Patent Consortium in Germany (updated)
Discussions and rumours have accompanied the announced purchase of 822 Novell patents by CPTN Holdings LLC for $450 million in cash in the course of Novell's merger into Seattle-based software company Attachmate Corporation (press release). According to a "notified merger project" (Ref. no. B5-148/10 of 06.12.2010; product market: "patents") announced by the German "Bundeskartellamt" (Federal Cartel Office), CPTN has been revealed as a joint venture of the four software heavyweights Microsoft, Apple, EMC, and Oracle (see report). As reported on this blog a couple of days ago, the open source community was so concerned about the patent deal that the Open Software Initiative even lodged a complaint with the Bundeskartellamt to "urge the FCO to investigate the CPTN transaction thoroughly and consider appropriate remedies to address the concerns raised" (see press release).
As the latest twist, Microsoft et al. have now withdrawn their request to establish a patent consortium in Germany, which can be concluded from the words "30.12.2010 (Rücknahme)" [engl. "withdrawal"] that have been added to the announced "notified merger project" on the website of the German "Bundeskartellamt".
However, it appears doubtful whether the withdrawal can really be interpreted as a consequence of the recent complaints of open source advocates. As speculated on Computerworld,
no reason was given for the withdrawal by German authorities, but it is likely voluntary as authorities would not yet have had time to investigate the proposal. CPTN Holdings still intends to purchase the patents, however.
"This is a purely procedural step necessary to provide time to allow for review of the proposed transaction," a Microsoft spokesperson said in an e-mailed statement. [...] CPTN may have withdrawn the filing in order to make tweaks that would help it pass muster with European regulators and ease critics' concerns.
In fact, Novell is being bought by Attachmate and the separate sale of Novell's patent portfolio to CPTN for $450 million was already agreed. With respect to the underlying "Patent Purchase Agreement", Andrew Updegrowe explained on the Standards blog that an Amended Proxy Statement pursuant Section 14(a) of the US Securities Exchange Act is "a comparative gold mine" for CPTN.
UPDATE: While it was first concluded that the amendment of the "notified merger project" announced by the Federal Cartel Office would show that CPTN's plans to buy Novell patents have been completely withdrawn, the community has now realised that this was only a formal move, rather than the assumed "big win for open-source advocates". As confirmed by Microsoft employees on TechFlash and ZDNet, the withdrawal was merely a formal step to allow time for the Attachmate acquisition of Novell to complete and CPTN will still buy Novell's patents.
posted by Volker 'Falk' Metzler on 1/12/2011 0 Comments
Labels: Attachmate, Bundeskartellamt, CTPN Holdings, FCO, Microsoft, Novell
posted by Volker 'Falk' Metzler on 1/08/2011 0 Comments
posted by Volker 'Falk' Metzler on 1/05/2011 0 Comments