EU Ministers Went Off-Brief In Patent Vote

MartinB writes "Several EU ministers reportedly went against the wishes of their nations in voting for the proposed EU Software Patent legislation in May. Among those misleading the council of ministers were representatives from Holland, Poland and Germany. The Dutch parliament is going as far as asking to change its vote, which was originally in favour of making software patentable."

Comments

In other words - the Dutch wish to vote No

[SuperKendall]

The text of the submission was somewhat misleading, for a second I thought it read the Dutch wished to support patents - but they really wish to vote no. I just thought someone should make that perfectly clear.

Re:In other words - the Dutch wish to vote No

[technix4beos]

Here's a more detailed analysis of this issue, just a few weeks ago:

http://www.osnews.com/story.php?news_id=7442

Re:In other words - the Dutch wish to vote No

[Thundertje]

That is correct, the parliament was misinformed by the minister and therefore they voted in favor of the legislation. And now the Minister of Eco. Affairs claims it was an error in his word processor. I say, away with that lying bastard (Excuse my language here I'm really pissed) a lying minister is something that CANNOT be tolerated in a modern and decent democracy, and I believe The Netherlands is a state that did a very nice try to be such a democracy (It works better than most democracies around the world I can guarantee you that much) but this is a thing you must not accept.
And I'm glad or parliament is not in favour of this, thank god there are some sensible people in politics *knocks on wooden thing*

Even our damned chancellor...

[char** argv]

...gave a flaming speech (german, sorry) for software patents and the protection of intellectual property as the new resources of the 21st century in Munich, 2 days ago. Note the european parliament voted AGAINST the draft, now the senate is clandestinely pushing for it's implementation. We're talking, demonstrating, doing everything in our possibilities here as german software developers, but the "social democratic" guys in power do not care, and do not have a fucking clue what they're talking about. Destroying innovation to appease the big companies :( If you're in europe, come on join at the FFII and help in the fight, please. It might be our last chance.

About time.

[Dark Lord Seth]

Here in the Netherlands, the fact that that asshole minister of us voted FOR software patents has been a nice little riot in the dutch techie world. People were encouraged to write said minister, write to his party, write to the head of the party, parliament, etc. I think that all of this caused sufficient public backlash that forced our goverment to make that bastard swallow his words and do The Right Thing(tm).

Re:This Should Be No Surprise

[Anspen]

You do realise that the problem in this situation was the coucil, that is the gouvernements of the member countries? Not "Eurocrats in Brussels".

Re:This could happen in the USA too.

[Short Circuit]

Actually, there have been many occasions where electors didn't vote for who they were expected to. A quick googling turned up this link.

Re:My gripes with software versus real patents.

[Daniel Dvorkin]

Quibble. I would argue that a patent covers a concept or idea; whereas copyright covers a specific implementation of a concept or idea.

Except that's not how patents on physical inventions work. Patents on almost everything except software cover implementations of ideas, and ideas for physical objects are not patentable at all. Only in software and other non-physical areas (e.g., "business methods" patents, which are even more absurd than software patents) are ideas given such protection. That's one of the major reasons that even people like me, who support IP law in general, think software patents are a horrible idea.