EU Parliament says no to software patent law

[Steve]

Thank heavens for that! A proposed software patent directive that could have had devastating effects on software writers, particularly the free / open source software community, has been kicked out. The idea was to give firms the ability to enforce their patents across the whole EU. Campaigners have been fighting to prevent the directive for a long time, claiming it favoured the big companies and could crush the smaller companies and projects. It seems their campaigning has finally paid off. The Inquirer reports:

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.

Phew!

[DavidM]

Thank goodness for that... as a member of several Open Source teams, this was giving my colleagues quite a few headaches!