Einführungsrede zur ersten Softwarepatente-Demo in Brüssel

01.09.2003: Am 27.8.2003 fand in Brüssel /Belgien vor dem Europäischen Parlament eine Demonstration gegen die geplante Richtlinie zur Einführung von Patenten auf Logik&Ideen (Softwarepatente) statt. Anwesend waren weit über 400 Teilnehmer und viele Pressevertreter. Markus Beckedahl, Vorsitzender des Netzwerk Neue Medien e.V. hielt hierbei die Einführungsrede.

	Place du Luxembourg: Ort der Demo

Hello everybody!

My name is Markus Beckedahl and i´m coming from the Network New Media, based in Germany. We are here to represent up to now more than 160.000 european citizens and over 2000 european companys who signed the eurolinux-petition. We demonstrate against the software patent proposal, which will be presented to the parliament on monday, the first of september.

What are the impacts? while traditional patents were for concrete and physical inventions, software patens cover an incremental field of human expression.

In other words: If the componist Haydn had patented "a symphony, characterisied by that sound is produced in extended sonata form, mozart and following componists would have been in trouble.

Because software patents cover the immaterial, it is very difficult to search for existing patents. So much so, that the American patent office regularly issues patents for exactly the same software idea. Such as the LZW patent which covers the ubiquitous GIF image format. This creates a very uncertain environment in which to do business.

Another problem with software patents is that we do not have one patent one product, as in the pharmecutical business. A single piece of software embodies hundreds or even thousands of ideas, any of which could be patented. As a software programmer, you will always be inventing what has already been patented. It will therefore be impossible to run a small business without the threat of being put out of business by a large patent holder. This, of course, is very bad for competition and for European business which has so far been able to grow and innovate without software patents.

Preventing software patents is consumer protection: More competition protects consumers from overly restrictive software licenses and provides more choice, leading to lower prices.

And to adress a message to the members of the european parliament: please don´t support the proposed directive unless amended so that software and business patents are clearly excluded from patentability.

We are here as representitives of young europeans. We want freedom of expressure and the freedom of ideas! It´s our information society and we want more innovation and not rules which resticed competition.

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