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Wednesday, July 6, 2005
A controversial patent directive has been thrown out in a landslide vote. 648 MEPs out of 680 voted today to reject the proposal, aimed at bringing Europe in-line with a similar U.S. bill.
"This is a great victory for those who have campaigned to ensure that European innovation and competitiveness is protected from monopolisation of software functionalities and business methods. It marks the end of an attempt by the European Commission and governmental patent officials to impose detrimental and legally questionable practices of the European Patent Office (EPO) on the member states," said the Foundation for a Free Information Infrastructure, in opposition to the directive.
Adversaries to the patent directive claim that a bill covering Intellectual Property (IP) would "stifle innovation" in Europe, as it allows the patenting of implementation within software. Many anti-patent activists say that if the bill were passed, small businesses and hobbyists would be in danger of lawsuit from corporations and their extensive patent portfolios.
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This page is archived, and is no longer publicly editable.
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Please note that due to our archival policy, we will not alter or update the content of articles that are archived, but will only accept requests to make grammatical and formatting corrections.
Note that some listed sources or external links may no longer be available online due to age.
The text of this article has been released into the public domain. In the event that this is not legally possible, this article may be used for any purpose, without any condition, unless such conditions are required by law. This applies worldwide. Copyright terms on images, however, may vary, so please check individual image pages prior to duplication.
