Columns - Straight talking - A patently tricky source of concern. Barry Fox explains why Europe's proposed new patent laws are worrying computer programmers.(Column)

Byline: Barry Fox, barryf@pcw.co.uk.

If you had walked down Victoria Street in London in mid-December you might have spotted Alan Cox, author of much of the code inside the Linux kernel, loitering outside the DTI building.

Inside, our Minister for Science and Innovation, Lord Sainsbury, and a team of suits from the British Patent Office in Wales were trying to reassure 100 or so computer programmers that Europe's plan to pass new patent laws does not mean Europe is going to follow America and Japan in allowing patents on more or less anything, including computer code and business schemes.

'They say they weren't excluding me, they just forgot to invite me,' said Cox, while handing out leaflets that challenged most of what was being said inside.

Almost certainly the Cox exclusion was a cock-up rather than conspiracy. The DTI suits were near desperate to get their message across, if only because they have spent the past five years under a barrage of letters from the open-source community and their MPs.

The DTI's problem, which is also the problem for the law-makers in Brussels, is that the original draft for a new European patent law was an apparently well-intentioned mess, which was further confused by clumsy amendments.

The law-making process in Europe, which creates directives all European countries must follow by enacting changes in local law, is bewildering. Patent law is complicated anyway, and no-one trusts anything that politicians, Brussels lawyers or big businesses tell us. 'They want to build bridges as long as everyone goes across their bridge', said Cox, typifying the them-and-us distrust.