In its plenary vote on 24th of September, the European Parliament approved the proposed directive on "patentability of computer-implemented inventions" with amendments that clearly restate the non-patentability of programming and business logic, and uphold freedom of publication and interoperation. The day before, EC Commissioner Bolkestein had threatened that the Commission and the Council would withdraw the directive proposal and hand the questions back to the national patent administrators on the board of the European Patent Office (EPO), should the Parliament vote for the amendments which it supported today. "It remains to be seen, whether the European Commission is committed to "harmonisation and clarification" or only to patent owner interests", says Hartmut Pilch of FFII.
"With the new provisions of article 2, a computer-implemented invention is no longer a trojan horse, but a washing machine" explains Erik Josefsson of SSLUG. That the majorities for the voted amendments had support from very different political groups http://www.europarl.eu.int/direct/documents/fr/vote/Resultats/Mercredi/Appels%20nominaux%202003-09-24.doc - this reflects the arduous political discussion that had led to two postponements before.
However, when 78 amendments are voted in 40 minutes some glitches are bound to happen: "The directive still claims algorithms to be patentable when they solve a technical problem" says Jonas Maebe.
The directive will have to withstand further consultation with the Council of Ministers that is more informal and hence less public than Parliamentary Procedures. A first opportunity to maintain the public pressure is handling of the Eurolinux petition http://petition.eurolinux.org/ in the Parliament`s Petition Committee at Brussels next week.
