Open Source Risk Management to Petition EU Parliament against Software Patents

On November 9^th Open Source Risk Management (OSRM) will launch an aggressive prior art documentation of software innovation that it hopes will cause the European Parliament to reject proposed amendments to EU patent law that would allow patenting of computer software. OSRM is the only vendor-neutral provider of risk mitigation and management solutions for open source software developers and marketers.  The group’s Patents and Prior Innovations Project will attempt to show that the history of software patents in the U.S. does not actually reflect intellectual history when it comes to software innovation. Since August, when the City of Munich decided to forestall it’s decision to implement Linux operating systems on 14,000 municipal computers citing fears that the EU parliament would choose of align it’s patent system to the U.S. model and begin granting software patents, open source supporters have been petitioning Parliament to defend the existing EU patent directive which clearly prohibits patenting of computer programs. 

Brian Kahin former White House senior policy analyst of technology and innovation explains that, “This project is being launched just as Europe considers whether to align its patent system closer to that of the US, a system that has a poor reputation within the software community.” Daneil Egger, founder and chairman of OSRM calls the U.S. patent system, "A patent system that misidentifies true innovators and fails to allow sufficient review by outside." He points out that "In the U.S., the average cost of patent litigation is about $3 million per lawsuit. Under such a system, those to whom a patent legitimately belongs must go to court to claim their benefits and protection - a costly and unfair tax on those who produce beneficial innovations. OSRM estimates that as much as fifty percent of the cost of defending against software patents is due to patents that never should have been granted in the first place."

The Patents and Prior Innovations Project will be sponsored by Grokline.net. The plan is to run a community-based open research project to trace the history of software innovations and patenting. The question presented is whether patents as granted reflect the actual history of software innovation. The goal is to generate a report to be presented to the European Parliament prior to the 2005 reconsideration of whether or not software patents should issue in the EU. A particular focus will be placed on the Munich list of software patents that Linux allegedly infringes. Billions of dollars for open-source developers hangs in the balance as it is widely perceived the final decision of the European Parliament will determine the fate of the commercial market for open source software in the world at large.