Europe Parliament Nixes Software Patent Law

MSN Money ^ | July 06, 2005 08:25 AM ET | AP

[N3WBI3]

STRASBOURG, France (AP) - The European Parliament on Wednesday rejected a proposed law to create a single way of patenting software across the European Union, a blow to big companies who had pushed hard for its adoption.

The so-called software patent directive, rejected by a 648-14 vote with 18 abstentions, would have given companies EU-wide patent protection for computerized inventions ranging from programs for complex CAT scanners to ABS car-brake systems. The protection would also have extended to computer programs when the software is used in the context of realizing inventions.

But lawmakers said the measure would stifle enterprise and did not promote innovation, and that human knowledge can't be patented. The move kills the legislation since the EU head office, which had drafted it, does not plan to set forth a new version.

[N3WBI3]

Well the EUro-trash got something right (or at least more right than we have it). Its too bad nobody is trying to comprmise on this and make shorter more stringent software patents.

We have the no patents, and steroid strength paten people going at it..

[N3WBI3]

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[Dominic Harr]

Excellent!

[antiRepublicrat]

After all the bad SCOTUS decisions plaguing us the last few weeks, it's nice to see some recent good news. First SCO loses big in its bid to extend their case yet again, and now EU-wide software patents are dead. But I'm not overly happy, because it's not over.

The reason this lost was that the big software players had huge undue influence on the committee that drafted the bill, writing it completely to their needs alone. Then they used some quite underhanded tactics to push it through intact to the general assembly for a vote. Once it was at the general assembly, the players couldn't stop the torrent of amendments that poured in to try to make the law somewhat fair to small players and writers of free software.

They then decided to let it die rather than have a law that actually protected the little guys. This way they can go to each individual country to get laws tailored to them, where a fair EU-wide law would have prevented that.