The draft Directive, often called the Software Patents
Directive, has been on the verge of approval by the Council of
Ministers since last May, when European Trade Ministers rejected
amendments made to the draft by the European Parliament.
But progress on the draft Directive has stalled, with political
manoeuvring keeping 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 motion, initiated by 61 MEPs in January, was approved by the
Parliament's influential legal affairs committee (JURI) earlier
this month.
JURI, and now the Conference of Presidents (the leaders of all
the Parliament's political groups), want the Parliamentary
President to tell the Commission that the current proposals need to
be reviewed. If granted, the request would start the Parliamentary
debate afresh.
The Commission is not bound to comply with the request, and may
ask the Council of Ministers to vote on the proposals as they
currently stand. If that happens, the draft will be returned to the
Parliament for a second reading – which has a much shorter time
scale for debate than that offered by a first reading.
"It is not certain that the Commission will comply with the
request of the Parliament," said Hartmut Pilch, president of
anti-patent group the Foundation for a Free Information
Infrastructure, "nor that it will use the opportunity to draft a
good text, even though the previous text of the Commission was so
poorly written that in the end it didn't serve anybody's purpose,
not even that of the patent lobby."
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