Joff Wild, chief editor of the IAM magazine, admits on his blog that the creation of a central patent court in Europe will be instrumental in legalizing software patents.
The confusing case of software patents in the UK gets more confusing
[…]
Earlier this week, the Slovenian Economy Minister (remember, Slovenia now holds the presidency of the EU) made a speech to the European Parliament in which he spoke of the emphasis his country was placing on finding a way to introduce a single European patent jurisdiction; so building on the progress made during the previous Portuguese presidency. The current situation shows why such talks are necessary – a central European patent court will help bring the certainty that, in a number of areas such as software and biotechnology, we currently do not have. Maybe such a court will be very restrictive in its view of patent protection for computer programs, but that surely has to be better than the mess we have at the moment. At least everyone will then now where they stand.
Joff Wild, IAM Magazine | 26 Jan 2008
Imagine a freaky judge at a central patent court adopting the same decision as the english judge Kitchin has made recently, and you get software patents validated Europe wide.