European Parliament boots out software patent bill |
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Published
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Thu, 07 Jul 2005 07:35
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The European Parliament has booted out a contentious bill that dealt with software patents. The bill was voted out by a huge margin of 648-14 with 18 abstentions.
This bill had sought to bring the patent laws on the continent at par with those prevailing in the US. The Computer-Implemented Inventions (CII) patents directive aimed to give software makers a blanket patent protection across the European Union.
The European Patent Office will continue to function as before, but without any unified rules. The good news for the opponents of the bill is that the officials at the EU are busy licking their wounds and have no immediate plans to introduce modified forms of the bill. EU spokesman Oliver Drewes made this very clear and said, "The commission respects the parliament's wishes; there will be no new proposals coming from the commission in this area."
The rejection of the bill is being seen as a victory for the open source software advocates who contend that software is adequately protected by existing copyright laws.
The Foundation for a Free Information Infrastructure (FFII), an organization that had relentlessly campaigned against the bill called it "a great victory for those who have campaigned to ensure that European innovation and competitiveness is protected from monopolization of software functionalities and business methods." The group had found fault with the bill on ethical issues as well, "It marks the end of an attempt by the European Commission and governmental patent officials to impose detrimental and legally questionable practices of the European Patent Office (EPO) on the member states," FFII said in a statement.
The group had argued that if the legislation were passed big businesses would have patented their business methods, thereby stifling small competitors. Even as the voting process was going on at the European Parliament in Strasbourg, protestors had gathered outside to pressurize their representatives to reject the bill.
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