EU rejects software patents [updated]

[unixronin]

The EU Parliament has rejected proposed legislation that would allow unrestricted patenting of software implementations and methods such as is currently being allowed by the US Patent and Trademark Office.  This should means that software innovation remains alive and well in Europe, even if it gets stifled here by stupid patents on software implementations that are neither innovative nor non-obvious.

Update:

This is a clearer and less ambiguous article on the same subject, from the BBC.  As it makes clear, the decision does not eliminate patentability of common or trivial software algorithms, but at least it does not legitimize the practice and lead the EU down the path of US patent legislation (under which, it seems, you could now probably get away with patenting the use of a Q-Tip to clean your ears, if you could find a way to justify describing it as a "business method").

There are between 150,000 and 300,000 registered software patents in the US and open source developers argue that many should never have been granted.  (Quoted from another BBC article)

The EFF has begun a campaign to counter these patents, and has identified a "Most Wanted" list of the top 10 most egregious software patents (see the bottom of the article), on which it is now doing prior-art research in the hope of overturning them.

Counter to the trend of many large high-tech companies supporting software patent schemes, IBM recently released 500 of its own software patents to the open source community.

IBM described the step as a "new era" in how it dealt with intellectual property and promised further patents would be made freely available.

IBM was granted 3,248 patents in 2004 and 25,772 over the last 12 years.  It reportedly has more than 40,000 current patents in all.

Comments

[rbos.livejournal.com]

What is that, the fourth, fifth time the EU legislature has rejected that bit of work? It's not over.

[unixronin.livejournal.com]

They did say they "would not seek further legislation". So maybe this is its last gasp.

[rbos.livejournal.com]

well, let's hope we don't see it as a rider to the "WE LOVE PUPPIES AND KITTENS ACT OF 2006".

[unixronin.livejournal.com]

Des the EU Parliament do the stupid "totally unrelated riders" game?

[rbos.livejournal.com]

not to my knowledge, but it still might get snuck in somewhere.

[technoshaman.livejournal.com]

Well, assuming rbos' dire predictions about puppies and kittens don't come true, this is bad news for Red Hat and good news for Mandriva and SUSE, who can develop all they want to outside the US (France and Germany respectively) and just sort of slide it in... or distribute a Non-US version...

This will also have the side effect of making IBM, who is a global company with a bigger legal staff and bigger lobbying group (if not more market cap - it doesn't) than MSFT, anti-patent. Innnnnteresting.