Irish MEPs Urged To Oppose Software Patent Directive

by Ulrika Lomas, for LawAndTax-News.com, Brussels

21 March 2005

In a briefing document sent to Irish MEPs last week, the Irish Linux Users' Group, the Irish Free Software Organisation and KDE, a community for software developers, called upon the Republic's representatives in Europe to reject the Software Patent Directive when it comes before the European Parliament for its second reading.

The European Commission recently rejected the EP's call for debate on the controversial legislation to be restarted.

Suggesting that the companies likely to benefit most from approval of the directive in its current form are from Japan and the United States, KDE suggested in a statement last week that:

"The European Commission - where Charlie McCreevy, who was appointed as opposed to elected, sits - is using procedural dodges to get around the fact that this directive no longer has a qualified majority, and has pushed it through against the twice-expressed will of Parliament (where our elected MEPs reside). It's a disaster for the European software industry; we're effectively handing the whole thing on a plate to a handful of US companies."

However, it is possible that the pleas of the three organisations may fall on deaf ears, given the strong support for the directive shown by Irish politicians for the draft directive in its initial stages.

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