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Restart Patents Directive, says Committee


An influential European Parliamentary committee voted yesterday to ask the Commission to send the proposed Directive on the patentability of computer-implemented inventions back to Parliament for a first reading.

Simon Gentry, founder of the pro-patent Campaign for Creativity, wrote a letter to his supporters today: "The assault on patents – based on a deliberate distortion of the facts – has, in effect, won."

Gentry added that he is considering winding up the lobbying group. "Set against the apparently limitless resources – both human and financial – of the anti-patent lobby, the cause seems lost."

The current draft has changed radically since the Parliament first considered it, while the membership of the Parliament and the European Union itself has also altered. These are reasons for a restart, say many MEPs.

The draft Directive, often known as the Software Patents Directive, has been on the verge of approval by the Council of Ministers since May, when European Trade Ministers rejected amendments made to the draft by the European Parliament. Some MEPs expressed fears that the wording of the Directive risks bringing to Europe the more liberal regime of software and business method patenting that exists in the US.

Progress on the draft Directive then stalled, as political manoeuvring 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.

The Polish Government has been influential in delaying the vote, taking advantage of new voting weights that came into force on 1st November. Denmark also appears to have disrupted progress of the draft in the run up to its Parliamentary elections on 8th February.

Once successfully rubber-stamped, the Directive is due to be sent back to the European Parliament for a second reading. But some MEPs argued that the legislative progress should be restarted instead, allowing the enlarged Parliament to give full consideration to the issues, instead of rushing it through in the three-month timescale that a second reading allows.

The issue came to a head yesterday in a meeting of the Parliament's legal affairs committee (JURI).

In what has been described as a heated debate, Charlie McCreevy, European Commissioner for Internal Market and Services, explained that the Council of Ministers had now reached consensus and that the draft was due to be re-instated as an A point at a forthcoming Council meeting.

Committee members reacted to the news by voting by 19 votes to two in support of a motion to ask the Commission to send the proposals back to the Parliament for a first reading, effectively restarting the process.

The Commission does not have to comply with the request. It may instead continue with the existing process, in the knowledge that once the Directive is put to the Parliament for a second reading, consensus is unlikely to be achieved.

According to UK Labour MEP Arlene McCarthy, it is more likely that the whole process will now be delayed for up to six months, in order to assess the impact of the legislation. "Under the circumstances this is the best solution," she said.

Austrian JURI member Eva Lichtenberger said: "The Legal Affairs Committee's initiative is a good beginning, but does not yet offer a happy ending to the software patents story."

She added: "Today's courageous decision introduces the possibility of a better solution. I am very happy that we now have an opportunity to prevent software patenting and to obtain a better directive that will benefit the whole of the industry. We may now be able to stop market giants – aided by an American-style patenting law – from forcing innovators and SMEs out of the market."

But Simon Gentry of the Campaign for Creativity believes that the Committee vote "will open the way to a deluge of anti-IP amendments that will probably result in the final stripping away of IP protection for the IT sector."

He continued: "At the very least we can expect at least another year of deep legal instability. At worst - and this is what I expect - the Parliament has slipped beyond influence and will, in time, vote to strip Europe's innovative IT industry of any legal protection."

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