In my yesterday's blog I had reported about a motion of 61 MEPs to re-start the legislative procedure for the EU Draft Directive on the patentability of computer-implemented inventions suggesting to have a second "first reading" of the proposal in the European Parliament. Today it becomes apparent that this motion might be doomed to fail. Moreover, there seem also some political tensions between the Greens in the Parliament, on the one hand, and FFII e.V. as well as nosoftwarepatents.com, on the other hand. euractiv.com writes:
"[...] There was no indication on 10 January that the motion would stand a chance of being voted on by Parliament any time soon. Under article 55 of the Parliament's rules of procedures, the initiative would need to come from the committee in charge of the dossier.
But the plan could end up going nowhere as it failed to secure support from Green MEPs who have persistently campaigned against the patentability of computer-implemented inventions (CII).
A spokesperson for the Greens told EurActiv that the initiative 'will fail' as it would first need approval from the Conference of Presidents of political parties in parliament. The group, he added, could end up damaging the whole project of blocking the patentability of computer-implemented inventions. 'This is not the right way to do it,' said the spokesperson. [...]"
The anti-patent camp in the European Parliament seems to be divided into a group of MEPs (many of them from Poland) supporting the motion and others preferring to carry on with the result of the first reading of 2003.
"[...] The Commission declined comment on the motion to restart the legislative process or to specify when the Council vote is now expected to take place.
While the motion has a real chance of derailing the progress of the Council of Ministers' version of the 'Patentability of Computer-implemented Inventions' directive, Leo Baumann of the European IT and communications industry association (EICTA), said he doesn't expect the group will be successful in its request. "It's possible to do that but you need a majority of the European Parliament and the approval of the conference of presidents (leaders of the political groups). I don't expect it to happen," Baumann said.
The EICTA believes that some software needs patent protection. Its members include software firms like Microsoft, SAP and Sun, hardware makers like HP and Intel and telecom companies like Ericsson and Nokia.
The EICTA has warned that restarting the legislative process would only succeed in continuing the current uncertainty over patenting computer-implemented inventions, possibly for years. Thus far, the EU has been unable to bring into line the myriad interpretations given to patent law by different European national courts. [...]"
[UPDATE0] 2005-01-11 The Parliamentary Group of the Greens in the German Bundestag seems to think positively about the re-start motion; see this press statement (Sorry; in German).
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Dipl.-Phys. Axel H Horns is Patentanwalt (German Patent Attorney),
European Patent Attorney as well as European Trade Mark Attorney. In particular, he is Member of:
yesterday's blog I had reported about a motion of 61 MEPs to re-start the legislative procedure for the EU Draft Directive on the patentability of computer-implemented inventions suggesting to have a second "first reading" of the proposal in the European Parliament. Today it becomes apparent that this motion might be doomed to fail. Moreover, there seem also some political tensions between the Greens in the Parliament, on the one hand, and 
FFII e.V. as well as 
