1. Software Patents do not provide any incentives for innovation (does anyone know a single entrepreneur who might ever have said that he would invest more in software development if only he could obtain patents for his software more easily?).


2. Software patents are often used to "protect" trivial details or basic ideas (often simple combinations of prior knowledge), whose publication certainly does not benefit the public (the patent monopoly is supposedly granted in return for some benefit to the public, such as a disclosure of valuable knowledge).


3. The current patenting practise of the EPO has produced a large number of questionable software patents.


4. Issuing an EU directive which legitimates the granting of software patents without seriously addressing the problems of the current patenting practise only leads to the proliferation of questionable software patents..


5. The technicity concept of much of the current patenting case law (software ideas are patentable if they can be claimed to be "technical") is vague enough to allow almost anything to be patented -- a patent attorney who is unable to draw up some "technical considerations" and base his claims thereon would hardly be worth his lawyer fees.
   The Councils' version of the directive proposal's technicity concept does little more than to define software per se as technical and therefore patentable.


6. If practically any software can be patented, then any business process or algorithm can also be patented, if only the patent applicant is careful to claim it in software terms. Any possibly remaining shades of a possibly intended limits on patentability would be eroded in the course of application of this directive. Just look at what happened to Art 52 EPC and the concept of technical invention during the last 15 years! Case law development has a formidable power of eroding any limits on patentability, even when they are worded in much clearer terms..


7. Software patents granted on the basis of the current EPO practise and of the Councils' version of the Directive Proposal lead to far-reaching monopolies in fundamental areas of current and future software application. These monopolies prevent competition and innovation and can destroy some of the best software companies..


8. The only survival strategy consists in accumulating patents in order to build up a counter-strike potential. In case of success, this is a money-burning nul-sum game. Otherwise it is expensive and deadly for the loser. (Is there already a patent game somewhere? Is the concept for such a game perhaps still available for patenting?)


9. The software patenting practise of the USA is continuing to be a cause for much discontent and criticism in the USA, and there is no reason for Europe to align its laws with that kind of practise. On the contrary, it would be advisable for Europeans to spend their time on unhindered innovation while unfortunate US competitors have to spend their time and money on patent litigation. Any European who wants or needs to apply for software patents in the US is free to do so.
   If the EU would only invest a fraction of the large sums of money, that its far-reaching software patentability plans are bound to consume, into making it more convenient to apply for US patents, then it would have done more for European competitiveness than by this directive.

The above arguments do not contain words such as "small and medium enterprises", because they are independent of company size. Large companies often act as promoters of software patentability because either they believe that they can win the patent game (see item 8 above) or because their patent departments are acting on their own and confusing the company's interests with the patent department's interests.