Victory in Europe: No software patents!

[stevo32]

On Wednesday July 6th, 2005, the European Parliament voted 648 to 14 for NO SOFTWARE PATENTS. This is a very important decision by the European Parliament as it means that the EU will not end up in a similar trap that the United States has ended up in with patents on things such as "1 click shopping carts".

Here are some links relating the the recent decision and the organizations surrounding it.
http://www.groklaw.net/comment.php?mode=display&sid=20050706113609571&title=Rocard%27s%20Speech%2C%20in%20English&type=article&order=&hideanonymous=0&pid=0#c336080
http://europarl.ffii.org/
http://europa.eu.int/comm/internal_market/en/indprop/comp/
http://eu.int/
http://media.vrijschrift.org/europarl050705.html

[john maclean]

:) 8)

[jebba]

That top link goes to a speech in parliament that is worth quoting directly here:

Thank you Mr. President, Mr. president, dear colleagues, in all likelihood this assembly will within the next two or three minutes reject the directive concerning the patentability of computer-assisted inventions. All our large parliamentary groupings, and even the smaller ones, have made this decision for a variety of contradictory reasons. I have neither a mandate nor the ability to comment on these reasons, but the convergence of the outcome reveals a common underlying meaning. Each block prefers to reject the text rather than acquiesce in the opinions of the other. But above all, there is here a common and near-unanimous anger of this Parliament against the inadmissible manner in which it has been treated by the Commision and the Council [applause]. Contempt, [applause] total and sarcastic contempt for the choices made by this Parliament in the first reading, total absence of consultation on the part of the Commission in the preparation of the text for the second reading, and efforts to squelch even government-to-government debate within the Council itself.

This is in itself a scandal. The current European crisis is largely caused by democratic inadequacy. The council bears a crushing responsibility for this inadequacy, which has been particularly in evidence in the case at hand. Let this rejection serve it as an object lesson[applause]. Insofar as the substance of this debate is concerned, the state of opinion represented here demonstrates that the issue is not ripe for resolution. A deepening of the debate would have been essential to arrive at a consensus. On this difficult but essential subject, with dozens of billions of dollars at stake, a collective rethinking is evidently underway.

In a sense, this rejection should be regarded as a message to the European Patent Office. The European Parliament has refused to ratify the recent administrative extensions of jurisprudence directed at liberalizing the patentability of software. If these extensions should continue, it appears clear that a parliamentary majority will emerge to put a stop to them.

Thank you, dear colleagues.