EUROPEAN PARLIAMENT LOOKS SET TO GIVE 'SOFTWARE PATENTS' DIRECTIVE THE CHOP!

11.43.02am UTC (GMT +0000) Wed 6th Jul 2005

The European Parliament today is expected to send the Commission and the Council a strong message that it will not be rushed into supporting a directive that it isn't happy with. Sharon Bowles, Liberal Democrat MEP and a European Patent Attorney said "I would be happy with a decision to reject the directive. As I've always said it better to have no directive than to have a bad directive".

"The speculation and interest surrounding this directive has been immense. It is unfortunate that a directive which sought to harmonise the status quo across the EU was so mis-presented".

Many Members were attracted into supporting Rocard's Amendments due to an enormous lobby from software writers who thought that the directive was bringing in US style software patents. Although the amendments have some attractive elements they were not drafted tightly enough to relate only to computer software and had large impact on electronics.

Yesterday during the plenary debate Sharon Bowles said to Mr Rocard (the rapporteur) "If you wished to construct a series of amendments to cripple and disperse Europe's industry - large and small - you could not devise anything more mischievous".

Today Mrs Bowles said "It has proven impossible to find amendments that gave the software writers the security they wanted that did not cause collateral damage to industry. The lack of legal clarity in the report risked creating a gold mine for patent lawyers and a nightmare for businesses."

The Parliament does not want to bin this forever, it wants the Commission to bring this back after there have been proper impact assessments.

Ends