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There had been concern that small businesses would be adversely affected if the Directive was supported by the European Parliament. (See: Small businesses in software patents row - June 2005, Shout99.)
The Professional Contractors Group (PCG), who opposed the move has called on the UK presidency to withdraw the directive completely and on the Commission to refrain from producing a new and unnecessary patenting proposal.
PCG chairman Simon Juden said: "Independent software developers have been granted a last-minute reprieve: without this vote, the basic tools of their trade would now be owned and controlled by big companies."
PCG is concerned, however, that a good decision has been reached for the wrong reasons. Mr Juden said: "This rejection is for many complex reasons to do with Europe’s difficulties after the recent referenda and the European Parliament’s perceived need to assert itself. Without these considerations, a bad directive would almost certainly have become law.
"Lobbying by large companies, and campaigning bodies funded by them, attempted to confuse MEPs about the issue. It is worrying for European democracy that, without the recent crisis, they would have succeeded. The proponents of the directive claimed that they represented the whole IT sector, including SMEs; that software patents were prevented by the directive; and that software patents were essential for SMEs and indeed the competitiveness of the whole EU.
"These companies were serving their own interests, not Europe’s, and would have used patents to exclude their smaller competitors from the market, reducing the pace of innovation and inflating the price of software in the process."
The PCG believes that software should not be patentable in principle, that patents would exclude small businesses from the market and that all businesses would have been disadvantaged as the price of software would inevitably have risen as a result of this monopolistic and deeply anti-competitive measure.
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Susie Hughes © Shout99.com 2005
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