[DMCA-Activists] EU Patent Law Delayed a Month

[Seth Johnson]

> http://www.idg.net/go.cgi?id=804236


EU software patent law delayed by a month

European parliaments cannot agree on text 

By Paul Meller, IDG News Service
May 19, 2003    

A proposal for a pan-European law on software patents is being delayed by a
failure among European parliamentarians to agree on the text, an official at
the European Parliament said Monday. 

The European Parliament was expected to formulate a position on the proposed
E.U. law at a committee meeting this Wednesday, with a view to submitting
the law for a vote at the European Parliament's plenary session in early
June. 

However, the legal affairs committee, which is leading the debate within the
European Parliament, has rescheduled the committee vote for June 10. An
official at the Parliament, who asked not to be named, said that there
remains too wide a scope of proposals for the committee to table at the
plenary session. 

The software patent directive has sparked fierce debate in the software
industry, with free software and open source software supporters arguing
that there should be no directive at all. At the other extreme, large
patent-holders such as IBM have been pushing lawmakers to make the software
patent law as inclusive as possible. 

Arlene McCarthy, the chairwoman of the legal affairs committee on this
debate, said earlier this month she is not prepared to consider any
proposals for amendments that do not acknowledge the patentability of
software, therefore appearing to cut out the voice of the open and free
software community. 

If the legal affairs committee agrees on the amendments at its June 10
meeting, the directive will be debated by the European Parliament at its
plenary session at the end of June, the Parliament official said. 

-- 

DRM is Theft!  We are the Stakeholders!

New Yorkers for Fair Use
http://www.nyfairuse.org

[CC] Counter-copyright: http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/cc/cc.html

I reserve no rights restricting copying, modification or distribution of
this incidentally recorded communication.  Original authorship should be
attributed reasonably, but only so far as such an expectation might hold for
usual practice in ordinary social discourse to which one holds no claim of
exclusive rights.