Software patent vote delayed

The European Parliament, facing mounting controversy over U.S.-style software-patenting legislation, has delayed a key vote until September.

A Monday vote on a controversial software patents proposal in the European Parliament has been put back until September, amid criticism that the legislation would institute a U.S.-style patent regime that would be detrimental to European small businesses and open-source software developers.

The proposed software-patenting legislation is the result of a European Commission effort to clarify patenting rules as they apply to "computer-implemented inventions," a term that includes software. The patent offices of various EU member states currently have different criteria for accepting the validity of software-related patents, a situation that the commission's proposal aims to remedy.

However, opponents of the suggested legislation charge that its ambiguity would effectively allow most software to be patented, a situation that currently exists in the United States. Critics have compared that situation to allowing a monopoly on the ideas in novels.

"It seems that we are on the verge of adopting a patenting regime modeled on that of the U.S., at the very moment when critics in that country have begun to be forceful and articulate in condemning it," Andrew Duff, a European Parliament member from the United Kingdom, said in a statement.

The Foundation for a Free Information Infrastructure, a software developer lobbying group, hailed the delay as a victory for the democratic process.

[John_Boukis]

I would like to believe that the United States patent system is a good system overall. The problem is that the government does not seem to "review" patents they just approve them all. Would it be unfair to say that the patents reviewers simply do not understand the scope of software technology? Stop approving everything that is "obvious", toss out the millions of patents that are such, and get with the 21st century technology.