EU say no to software patent law

[The_Right_Honourable_Brit]

THE EUROPEAN PARLIAMENT has rejected the introduction of the software patent directive by a 648-18 vote.

The directive was intended to give firms patents EU wide rights, but faced sustained opposition from campaigners who had thought it favoured multinationals.

Florian Muller, who founded the nosoftware.patents.com ginger group last year, said: "A nightmare is over. Parliament put an end to the lies of the EU Commission and so many others".

He claimed that that the EU Commission and many European governments denied the directive would allow software to be patented, but "that was the whole idea".

The vote confirms earlier guidance by the European Parliament in February this year that the Commission was on the wrong track.

The Legal Affairs Committee asked the Commission to re-start the directive. But, claimed Muller, Jose Manuel Barroso, the EU Commission president, declined such requests.

Today's decision, he said, meant that the Commission had alienated the Parliament forcing the MEPs to show that it was the final arbiter.

"That demonstrated to the Commission that it had better not ignore the Parliament again in a situation like that," he said.

Source: Inquirer

Well this is certainly good news as it would have basically crushed the open-source community.

 

[slimothy]

wow thats weird at 6AM this mornign i stumble across a site dedicated to this and it had a javascript timer counting down to the decision and it said 6 hours to go, I thought thier timer was funny but I guess not

Well thats good news to software developers that side, now if we can get a similar resolution maybe we'd have an equal footing too