The European Commission has been working on the directive on software patents for quite some time now. In the first round the European Parliament accepted so many amendments that in fact there was little left of the initial proposal. In the second draft the EC changed little, so there was again an enormous protest form politicians, SME's, scientists and software developers. The Open Source communities were the first to protest, but now criticism comes from all areas.
Are we heading to the lawsuit environment that America has become with many software-patent infringement cases, or can we turn things around just in time for the final bell. The European high-tech industry thinks software patents are necessary to protect their inventions. Is that so, or will steps towards harmonization and globalisation in the end lead us to American nightmare. Who better than Philips, a former MEP, the Business Software Alliance, Foundation for a Free Information Infrastructure and forth standing professors in software engineering could give us their views. And of course there is room for debate.
speaker:
Jan
Bergstra,
Johanna
Boogerd,
Arnoud
Engelfriet,
Mikko
Valimaki,
Benoît
Müller
location:
Room D008 , Oudemanhuispoort