Dr. Oswald Roemer
CEO of pdv
Technische Automation +
Systeme GmbH

Software patents are superfluous. Extending patent rights to software would open the floodgates to trivial patents. This would especially affect small and medium sized enterprises. The result would not be an increase of innovations as originially aimed for by the Patents Act, but would be the complete opposite, namely the obstruction or even the eradication of competition particularly delimiting innovative start-ups. Copyright protection and trade secret protections are better suited to protect intellectual property of software innovations. Therefore, the Councils' draft of the EU directive must be revised comprehensively.