European Council Approves Software Patents

A. S. Bradbury writes "ZDNet reports that the EU Council has voted to pass changes to European patent law that will allow the patentability of software. See the FFII for more coverage. Currently, the FFII states 'The Irish Presidency's proposal was passed, with support from Germany, France and most of the other countries whose ministers had publicly promised to oppose or at least abstain. The only no vote came from Spain (to be confirmed), Italy and a few others abstained.' As you may remember, Germany had previously promised to vote against software patents. The FFII news page seems to have been showing growing support in European countries for the FFII and other organisations fighting against software patents, but unfortunately that wasn't enough. So, what now? The European elections are approaching, which means MEPs might be more willing to listen to our views than normal. Slashdot has covered software patents in Europe before."

Comments

Audio files and transcripts

[benja]

.ogg files and transcripts of the decisionmaking process are here.

I'm disappointed that the German government voted for after initially saying they'd at least abstain -- my understanding is that they could have held up the process if they had at least abstained. :-(

Re:What do you think?

[benja]

The protection that we need is the protection from getting sued if we have an innovative idea and dare to publish the resulting software. Software patents make great weapons against small developers who cannot afford a patent lawsuit.

Besides, what kind of dorky attitude is it that nobody should be allowed to build on an idea for twenty years?!? Imagine that somebody has had a trivial idea and you get the same idea from elsewhere, and build something much larger on it. Well, you cannot use your ideas for the next twenty years if the first person has patented it.

I was part of the Dutch FFII delegation

[motown]

This afternoon, 5 of us officially presented a petition against software patents to Dutch MP's responsible for Economic Affairs.

We were rather lucky, since one of us had good contacts with one of those MP's, who was sympathetic to us and had considerable influence, resulting in a quick arrangement to hand over the petition. Normally, the procedure would have taken weeks.

Many MP's were quite interested in our information, and were particularly concerned about the fact that our minister of Economic Affairs, Laurens-Jan Brinkhorst, who was to vote in the EU council on our country's behalf, had apparently misinformed our national parlement.

They even announced they would be holding an extra debate, probably tomorrow.

During the day, we were kept informed through our mobile phones. It was nerve wreckening. We kept receiving conflicting reports about wether we would be getting a majority against or not. Near the end, we even heard that the Netherlands would probably have the deciding vote! You can understand that nearly drove us crazy. :)

Eventually, the news broke...

And again, mister Bolkestein seems to have played a crucial role on the side of the software patent supporters. :(

On behalf of all the people in the Netherlands, I would like to apologize to all the people of Europe for mister Bolkestein. He makes me ashamed to be Dutch. :(

The fight is not over, however! It will be more difficult now, but the European Parlement seems to be really pissed, and most Eastern members that are joining the EU now (and will be part of the parliament after the next elections in June) appear to be opposed against software patents.

Also, it amazed me how easy it can be to get in touch with influential people, as long as YOU KNOW THE RIGHT PERSONS that have the relevant connections!

In spite of the defeat, I'm still impressed with the difference we managed to make today. At least more people in our government are informed now. And we won't be giving up the fight! We made a few mistakes the last few days (hey, we were new at this), but we also accomplished a lot and also learned A LOT of lessons.

I would like to end this post with two pieces of advice:

1) I'm calling upon ALL European Citizens to VOTE IN THE NEXT EUROPEAN ELECTIONS! Even though there is much wrong in European politics, not using your vote and at least applying that little influence you do would be insanely foolish!

2) Let's all coordinate our lobbying efforts! If you have even just one or two hours a week available to help out, spend it by contacting certain EP's (preferably try to start a dialogue with one or two specific EP's, so you can concentrate on them and build up more personal relations) and contact FFII to notify them of your efforts and inform them who you are in contact with. There were only five of us, and look how far we have come in only 5 days time!

Let's get to work! Autumn will be upon us before we know it! And the elections are even less than a month away!