06/07/2005

In a piece of good news, the EU Patents Directive was overturned by a large majority this morning in the European Parliament. One of the speakers in the Exploiting Potential symposium last week discussed this issue at length, and a couple of days ago I emailed the Irish MEPs to express my opposition to the proposal.

I actually heard the news this morning from none other that Dublin MEP Gay Mitchell, who emailed me back:

Thank you for your recent email. The European Parliament this morning voted to reject the draft directive on computer-implemented inventions. It does not seem likely that the Commission will bring forward an alternative in the near future. A consensus seems to have evolved in the Parliament that no directive is better than a bad directive.

Seems like Gay was on the same page as Associated Press:

“It was a mess. Better no directive than a bad directive,” said Tony Robinson, spokesman for the Socialist group in parliament.

Still, good for him for emailing back.

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