The Register informs that the new member states are already making a difference:
“The Polish government has withdrawn its support for the European software patent directive. At a cabinet meeting in Warsaw yesterday, officials concluded that the directive does not meet its original objective of limiting patents on software and business methods in Europe.
According to a statement from the FFII (Foundation for a Free Information Infrastructure), without Polish support the bill is 16 votes short of a qualified majority, and cannot be passed. This is due, in part, to the new voting weights allocated to each member state.
…
“The questionable compromise that the EU Council reached in May was the biggest threat ever to our economic growth, and to our freedom of communication,” said Wladyslaw Majewski, president of the Internet Society of Poland. “The desire of the patent system and the patent departments of certain large corporations must never prevail over the interests of the economy and society at large.”
Feed: A Fistful of Euros
November 20th, 2004 at 12:12 am
YES! Victory! ?Happy Dance?
Software patents are such an incredibly bad idea. The entire point of patents is to stimulate innovation, and software patents do nothing of thew sort. Au contraire! they strangle it, because the entire history of programming is one of building on top of other peoples good ideas, and allowing patents to stop that would effectively kill progress *dead* So a loud thankyou to our polish friends.-
November 20th, 2004 at 12:35 am
Hurray for the Poles
November 20th, 2004 at 10:14 pm
Wow. Three cheers for the Polish government!
So rebutting my deep scepticism, we new members brought some changes for the better into the EU after all…