Infoworld on the postponement

[James Heald <j.heald@ucl.ac.uk>]

http://www.infoworld.com/article/03/06/30/HNeupatent_1.html

Paul Meller's latest piece is interesting.

After restating his previous line that the JURI report was intended as a 
middle way between "two irreconcilable interest groups", namely "large 
firms pressing European lawmakers to extend the reach of the law, and 
open source and free software supporters calling for all patents to be 
outlawed", Meller goes on to quote

> one person in the Parliament who asked not to be named [who] said
> that the controversy surrounding the dossier prompted Parliament
> planners to leave the debate and the vote on the proposed law until
> September.

> "The range of views on this subject is too wide still," she said,
> adding: "It was felt that a delay until September would allow
> parliamentarians more time to understand the complex issues involved,
> and might result in a narrowing of the opinions."

Hmmmm.  Now I wonder who that could have been  :)

> Large firms that already own libraries of patents want the E.U. to
> follow the route the U.S. has taken, by allowing so-called business
> methods to be patented. They also want to be able to protect
> standalone software packages that have no direct link with an external
> machine or device.

> The Commission, the legal affairs committee of the Parliament and
> national governments from the 15 EU member states want to restrict
> patentability to genuine inventions that use software to deliver their
> benefits to customers.

> Open source and free software supporters fear that even this muted
> form of software patentabilty would in the end pull Europe in the
> direction of the U.S. and Japan, where patents are granted for
> business methods such as the one-click online shopping tool first used
> by Amazon.com.