The EPO has announced that it will conduct a public consultation in the run-up to its review of a key European law on the patentability of computer programs. Meanwhile, the Boston-based Free Software Foundation (FSF) has said that it has obtained a raft of new funding, which it will put into the next stage of its global campaign to exclude software from patentability.

The EPO hopes that third-party input will provide valuable support for its upcoming review of EPC Article 52. Prompted by several recent, high-profile cases that have hinged on the Article's wording, the referral will focus on the clause requiring that computer programs 'as such' must not be thought of as inventions and how that clause should be interpreted. While the EPO has made it clear that it does not intend to cancel the Article and allow programs to be patented, it has pledged to give Europe's IP community clearer guidance 'on how the details of this exclusion are to be applied.'

Questions set for the review have been designed to separate computer programs from patentable computer-implemented inventions, or programs that achieve clear technical effects. The referral will investigate a range of possibilities for how a computer-implemented invention should be defined for example, whether its technical effect must occur within a computer, or upon physical hardware in the real world.

Those who wish to file written statements with the EPO are invited to submit their papers in accordance with Article 10 of the Enlarged Board of Appeal's Rules of Procedure. 'To ensure that any such statements can be given due consideration,' says the EPO, 'they should be filed together with any new cited documents by the end of April.' Electronic copies of submissions must be addressed to Dg3registry_eba@epo.org. Full text of the referral can be found on the EPO website at www.epo.org/patents/appeals/eba-decisions/referrals/pending.html.

The EPO is not the only group in the software IP debate seeking information to support its work. Following its involvement in a series of recent court cases, which threw key US software patents into question, the FSF has secured necessary funds to enter the next phase of its End Software Patents (ESP) campaign. The FSF will collecct and categorise relevant material from all over the world, including developing economies such as India and Brazil.

According to ESP Phase II leader, Ciaran O'Riordan, 'There's a mountain of information, but also a bottleneck, in that much of it is contained in electronic archives sometimes public, sometimes private and in news stories, and unmaintained websites. By organising this information we can form an immense tool to help existing and future campaigns around the world.'

While some IT developers have acclaimed the FSF's General Public License freeware platform, others have argued that removing patent protection from software robs it of its core value.