EuroLinux Attacks EU's Software Patent: although software isn't patentable in Europe under the Munich Convention, the European Patent Office (EPO) has been granting patents which can be used to protect programming techniques, computer programs and software. This is happening because of a loophole in the Munich Convention which allows industrial inventions based on innovative programming techniques to be patented. The EU is currently considering removing computer programs from the exceptions list of the Munich Convention, and this would effectively open the floodgates. "It would be possible to use patents to get a monopoly on the use of a business method or an electronic commerce method by patenting as such its implementation in a program for computers," says the Alliance, which has assembled a group of ten industry luminaries, including Tim Berners-Lee, to lobby against the change.