[Cross-posted]

Michel Rocard opposes the patentability of software

"Everyone copies, and this is a good thing" By Florent LATRIVE and Laurent MAURIAC

Liberation, Monday June 30, 2003

"A civilization should be preserved where the place of the world outside the market and of the human intellect is respected."

One does not find a computer on the Parisian desk of Michel Rocard. He admits it freely: he is not "one of the generation which has an easy facility with the computer". However, as president of the Committee for Culture in the European Parliament, he has had to plunge himself, with an "evil madness", into software patentability, "words which even a year ago were unknown to me". Today, if he speaks about it in such an animated way, it is because hiding behind the technical aspects there is a real issue about civilization. For the ex prime minister, the introduction of patents on software in Europe would be "very serious". It would call into question the freedom of movement of human knowledge. Until now, software has been officially excluded from patentable subject-matter in Europe, just like mathematical equations or cooking recipes. But for several months, a very polemical draft Directive has been before the institutions of the European Union which aims to modify this regime. It will be put to the vote in the European Parliament at the beginning of September.

Q.: Why do you reckon that Europe should not authorize patents on software?

Since the cave of Lascaux, it is not clear that humanity has progressed in its aesthetic capacities. As for its ethical capacities and morals, one is even more doubtful. On the other hand, in the field of technical knowledge and the control of nature, the progress is astounding. The dizzying growth of knowledge is the key to this history. Knowledge was spread by copying, everyone recopied everyone, and that was good. With the patentability of software, one is re-writing the statutes on human knowledge. All of the intellectual exchange in the creations of the human spirit, the means of bringing knowledge together, will be achieved more and more by software. If patentability is introduced, i.e. a cost, a prohibition, one sets up a new rule. It is worrying.

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Full translation at: http://www.aful.org/wws/arc/patents/2003-06/msg00221.html

Original (French) story at: http://www.liberation.fr/page.php?Article=121303

-- Raju