EU Parliament Approves Software Patents

Posted by timothy on Wednesday September 24, 2003 @12:59AM from the typical-statists dept.

AnteTempore writes "The voting has just ended. Few good and several bad amendments were accepted. The directive proposal was accepted: 361 for, 135 against, 28 abstentions. The precise numbers and results for each amendment will be available on europarl.eu.int tomorrow." Reader swentel submits this report on the vote (French) with slightly different numbers (364 voting yes, 153 No, 33 abstaining) but just as bad. Watch this story for updates. Update: 09/24 15:44 GMT by T : Dr.Seltsam writes to say that the early reports are "not quite correct. The German publisher Heise states in this article, that the vote concerned strong changes on the directive." In particular, "pure software patents will not be allowed." Google's translation engine does a decent job with the German.

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Allelujah! by anonicon · 2003-09-24 02:58 · Score: 0, Flamebait

Yeah, software patents are bad, but as an American, I love this. If European governors are all hot to trot for software patents, I can't help but believe that Americans will be the big winners in this since we have *years* of patented software available.

I'm gonna laugh my ass off if it turns out patented US software ends up dominating the software scene over there ("Whoops! Sorry Nigel, that's already been invented by someone in Utah!"). There's nothing like having another country eating your lunch to spur reform.

Gotta love lawmakers who sell out their own country to enormously powerful multinationals.

Peace,
Chuck