"[...] STRASBOURG, France (Reuters) - The European Commission will not propose a new law on the patenting of computer-related inventions if the European Parliament rejects the current controversial proposal, a top official said on Tuesday.
"If the parliament decides to reject it, then the Commission will respect your wishes. I will not propose a new directive," EU Internal Market Commissioner Charlie McCreevy told lawmakers.
"You can of course reject or substantially amend the proposal," he said. [...]"
This is indeed an important message: The EU Commission will not give the patent critics amongst the Parliamentarians another chance to reconsider a second version of a Directive on computer-implemented inventions which then might be more restrictive.
Now the Parliament has two options:
Mooting to legally challenge the decision of the EU Council, in particular by invoking the European Court of Justice (ECJ); or
Starting with the Second Reading of the Directive as proposed by the EU Council.
The worst case development would surely be that the Parliament concentrates to press for severe amendments in a Conciliation Committee. Such amendments might perhaps go into the direction of the amendments as proposed by the Parliament as a result of the first reading. Such re-enforfced proposals would then hit the EU Council during deliberations in the Conciliation Committee. Given the dominance of the anti-patent campaigners' paroles in some of the EU Member States' national Parliaments, there could be some pressure on the respective national Govenments to accept amendmends as a result of the deliberations in the Conciliation Committee which are far away from the wording as sent into the second reading. But there is still hope that a sufficient number of Parliamentarian will be reasonably sceptical towards the proposals of the anti-patent extremists. And, I still hope that the EU Commission would, under worst case circumstances, have the necessary standing for pulling the plug by revoking the original legislative proposal in order to prevent the industry being harmed by the destructive proposals of the anti-patent movement. No Directive would be far better than any Directive that comes close to that of the first reading.
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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:
Reuters has a report on 
