http://jlp.holodeck1.com/blog/
2005-07-06
Software patents rejected
In the morning members of the European parliament voted on a very important issue for every computer user. They were deciding on the future of the software patent directive. As all of you should know by now, it would legalize almost unlimited patentability of software, if accepted. This would only be good for big multinational companies and extremely damaging for everyone else (medium and small size companies, free and opensource software community and all the people who use computer software).
Fortunately the fight for our rights was successful. Members of European parliament clearly rejected the software patents directive in its current form by a large margin (648 votes against 14). This means that the directive must be rewritten from scratch. And this time we have to make sure it will be written properly and benefit all the people.
Sources:
- FFII - European Parliament says No to software patents
- BBC - Software patent bill thrown out
- Reuters - EU assembly throws out bill to harmonize patents
- RTE - EU vote over software patents
- IHT - Patent law is rejected in Europe
