The European Parliament's Committee for Legal Affairs and the Internal Market (JURI) voted Tuesday 17 June about a list of proposed amendments to the planned software patent directive. It was the third and last in a series of committee votes. The results will be presented to the parliament in plenary early in September. The other two commissions (Culture, Industry) had chosen to more or less clearly forbid software patents. The rapporteur of the JURI committee, Arlene McCarthy (UK socialist) also claimed to be aiming for a "restrictive harmonisation of the status quo" and "exclusion of software as such, algorithms and business methods from patentability". Yet McCarthy presented a voting list to fellow members of parliament that does make it possible to turn ideas like the Amazon One-Click shopping method into patentable inventions.
McCarthy and her followers rejected all amendment proposals that would limit patentability while supporting all those that even go beyond the European Commission's proposal. The new amendments threaten to impose unlimited patentability and patent enforceability in Europe, with little chance of recovery for years to come.
Most of McCarthy's proposals found a conservative-socialist 2/3 majority (20 of 30 MEPs), whereas the proposals from the other committees (CULT, ITRE) and study reports commissioned by parliament and other EU institutions were disregarded. A few socialists and conservatives voted together with Greens, Left and (partially) Liberals in favour of amendments that would limit patentability, but they were overruled by the two biggest blocks.
Daniel Cohn-Bendit (Greens - Fr), co-president of the Greens/EFA group and chairman of a conference earlier this year on software patents and SMEs, commented: "This patent report is an insult even to the principle of free trade. Pretending to protect inventors and their inventions, it instead allows multinationals to lock up the market."
Detailed description of the vote in JURI
http://swpat.ffii.org/news/03/juri0617/
Public debate about software patents in The Guardian: Richard Stallman and
Nick Hill attack software patents
http://www.guardian.co.uk/online/story/0,3605,970294,00.html
Rapporteur Arlene McCarthy defends her proposals
http://www.guardian.co.uk/online/story/0,3605,975126,00.html
(Contribution by Hartmut Pilch, Foundation For a Free Information structure)