Patents: The pro-swpat lobby like to claim that software patenting will benefit EU-based SMEs and the economy, instead of benefitting large, US-based companies.
It’s pretty trivial to show this up, however. Here’s the figures, based on FFII’s stats on EPO software patent applications by country of applicant (current as of 2003/11/15):
|
Country of applicant
|
Patents applied with EPO
|
|
| US | 22778 | 46.84% |
| (All EU countries combined) | 11855 | 24.38% |
| JP | 10580 | 21.76% |
| CA | 1074 | 2.21% |
| IL | 724 | 1.49% |
| AU | 525 | 1.08% |
| KR | 500 | 1.03% |
| SG | 95 | 0.20% |
| NZ | 73 | 0.15% |
| RU | 66 | 0.14% |
| (all remaining countries) | 357 | 0.73% |
So, a whopping 46.84% of the patent applications on file with the European Patent Office were registered by US companies, not local inventors; and only 24.38% of the patent applications were from EU-based companies.