Microsoft denies accusations of pressuring Denmark over EU patent directive

By Matt Whipp and Görel Brynolf

Posted on 16 Feb 2005 at 11:37

Microsoft is trying to stamp out the fires lit by the Danish media which is reporting Bill Gates has threatened to close down a successful Microsoft-owned software house if the Danish government fails to back an EU technology patent directive.

According to Danish newspapers Børsen and the Copenhagen Post, Bill Gates attended a meeting in November on the issue. They quote Microsoft Chief legal counsel Marianne Wier, who claims that in a conversation with Denmark's prime minister Fogh Rasmussen, Gates said: 'If I'm going to keep my development centre in Denmark, it demands that there must be a clarification of rights issues. Otherwise I will move it to the US, where I can protect my rights.'

The software builder, called Navision, employs around 800 developers, and makes ERP solutions. It competes with the likes of Germany's SAP.

Most parties embroiled in the foofaraw are backpedalling like fury. The Danish Prime Minister says that such comments weren't made. 'He hasn't had any meeting with me. I can't confirm the information, at all. We have no idea about this,' said Fogh Rasmussen, according to DR Nyheder Online.

Microsoft is not denying Wier's comments tothe media, but is denying Microsoft had any such intentions.

The European vice president of Microsoft Business Solutions, Klaus Holse Andersen, told ZDNet yesterday that Gates had never made such a statement. 'No, that is not what he said in the meeting ... There is no plan for us to close down the site.'

There's no doubt that it's a great story: insidious goings-on from the boss of the company we love to hate from the country we love to hate over here meddling with the EU directive we live to hate. But even if the quote is true, Microsoft stands in good company. IBM - a strong supporter of the open source community, which itself is violently opposed to the directive - has a massive patent portfolio and in 2001 engaged in hard talks with the French government about moving out R&D centers if the government continued to oppose the draft directive. More recently a group of European comms companies directed letters to the Italian presidency and then the Polish Prime Minister suggesting European R&D jobs were at risk if the directive is not pushed through.