EU Software Patents Thrown Out By A Complete Landslide
from the wow dept
While we noted that the momentum had (once again) been shifting against the idea of software patents in Europe, given the history of the idea, it still seemed like supporters of the idea would be able to push it through somehow (after all, they did so last time even though their own regulators said that the process had been done incorrectly and should be started over). However, it appears that people finally got through to politicians concerning just how bad an idea this was, and the EU Parliament has voted against software patents by the somewhat astounding margin of 648 to 14. As noted in the article, this may be the end of the proposal, but it does leave open plenty of questions — as each EU member country now gets to decide on its own how to handle the issue, which could lead to a lot of cross border problems. Still, on the whole, not forcing everyone to agree to unnecessary software patents is a step in the right direction.
