"This is absolutely disgusting," said Jonas Maebe, board member
of lobby group the Foundation for a Free Information
Infrastructure. "Things would be much more easier [sic] if we
scrapped all those rules and simply wrote down 'The Council
presidency and Commission can do together whatever they like'."
Lobbying over the draft Directive, often called the Software
Patents Directive, has evolved from voicing fears that it will
import a liberal regime of software and business method patenting
into the EU, to expressing concerns over the ability of the
Commission and Council of Ministers to ignore the views of the
elected European Parliament – which last year extensively amended
the draft Directive.
European Trade Ministers rejected the Parliamentary amendments
in May, but since then political manoeuvring has kept the proposals
off the Council agenda, where it was due to be included as an "A"
item, being one that is voted through without discussion.
In the meantime, MEPs have been fighting their corner, and
opponents of the draft were heartened last month when the European
Parliament overwhelmingly approved a motion asking the
Parliamentary President to tell the Commission that the current
proposals need to be reviewed.
If granted, the request would have started the Parliamentary
debate afresh.
However, the Commission was not bound to comply with the request
and Mr Barroso, the Commission President, confirmed early this
month that he would be sticking to the usual procedures.
Furthermore, he said, the measure was likely to be pushed through
at today's meeting of the Competitiveness Council.
As predicted, the draft Directive has now been approved, with
the result that it will now be returned to the Parliament for a
second reading – a procedure that allows a much shorter time scale
for debate and requires larger majorities for amendments than that
offered by the requested first reading.
Today's decision was by a qualified majority. Spain voted
against and the Austrian, Italian and Belgian delegations
abstained.
The news was welcomed by Simon Gentry of the pro-patent Campaign
for Creativity.
"It has been a frustrating period for our supporters who
vehemently believe arguments against the Directive have been deeply
misleading, and that the debate has been subverted into an
anti-patent debate," he said. "The Directive explicitly states that
software itself will not be patentable, but inventions that use
software will be. The Directive's objective has always been to
ensure there is a clear legal framework in place to support the
existing practice of the European Patent Office."
He continued: "The European Parliament now has to consider
whether it really wants to be responsible for stripping Europe's
innovative high-tech companies of their patent protection just as
other parts of the world, notably India and China are introducing
CII patents to encourage and protect their innovators."
EICTA, a European industry body representing Microsoft, IBM and
many other tech companies, also welcomed today's decision by the EU
Competitiveness Council to adopt a Common Position on the proposed
Directive.
Director General Mark MacGann said: "We believe the Common
Position provides a balanced framework to protect and encourage
innovation throughout Europe."
However, some MEPs have already sworn to give the proposals a
rough ride at the second reading.
