EU Rapporteur Publishes Software Patent

Sanity writes "Michel Rocard, economist and former French prime minister, has just published a report on the European Software Patents Directive. He is the European Parliament's draftsperson or "rapporteur" on the directive, and so it is likely that his views will be taken very seriously. The anti-software patent lobby group FFII like the report, saying that it "contains all the necessary ingredients for a directive that achieves what most member state governments say they want to achieve: to exclude computer programs from patentability while allowing computer-controlled technical inventions to be patented." The Directive will have its second reading on July 6th."

Guess they forgot to buy him out :-)

[Delgul]

Bidding can now start...

Re:Guess they forgot to buy him out :-)

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe "no patents"-organisations already did ;)

I say

[Anonymous Coward]

Hooray for the French!

(this post exists solely to see if the Americans moderators on /. can overcome their indigenous [and irrational] anti-French sentiment)

so what means this...?

[diegocgteleline.es]

...this is good or is bad? Damn, my knowledge is based in what /. considers right or wrong, if you don't say me what I've to think I don't know what to think!

Re:im confused

[maxwell demon]

How tightly is "controlling the forces of nature" defined? After all, one could argue that controlling the flow of electrons in a microchip (which software obviously does when you run it on a normal computer) would also be controlling the (electromagnetic) forces of nature.

Re:I say

[Omnifarious]

I do not have any irrational French sentiment. It's totally rational. I will hate the French much less as soon as various idiots stop importing impossible to spell words like 'hors d'eurves', 'faux pas', and such because French is supposedly somehow more cultured than everything else.

But, I would still have moderated that post up. :-)

Re:so which is it ?

[Anonymous Coward]

You seem to have confused hot with hairy.

Re: forces of nature

[Spy der Mann]

How tightly is "controlling the forces of nature" defined?

How about this [google.com]?

I think that's explicit enough.