Patent law passes EP committee without major changes 

Most of the debate has been dealing with the question of whether pure software should be patentable or not. The classical test that has been applied to a patent application has so far been whether it deals with the forces of nature, which would not be the case with pure software. 

The European Patent Office in Munich has issued 30,000 patents involving software, many of which were issued for pure software. EPO will not be bound by the directive. 

The rapporteur's main objective was to avoid the patentability of pure software. In order to achieve this, he proposed an amendment to change the directive's title to "patentability of computer-aided inventions". In addition, he introduced an amendment asking that the innovation must be of a technical nature: "In particular, the technical contribution must be novel and not obvious to a person skilled in the art." 

The Legal Affairs committee rejected both amendments, but it adopted an alternative amendment defining the scope as "computer-controlled inventions". 

The BSA thinks that "some of the amendments proposed by the Socialist rapporteur, Michel Rocard, could drag Europe’s patent regime back to the 19th century, notably by linking computer-implemented inventions to the obsolete notion of 'natural forces'."  

The FSF claims that "by relying on undefined terms and ineffective limits, the text that the Council has handed to the Parliament would allow patents on software standards, business methods, and website development. "

While EICTA, which represents many large industry firms , says "Europe’s high-tech SMEs are concerned about losing the opportunity to patent their inventions. They are in favour of the harmonisation that this Directive is trying to achieve, as it will improve access to the single market for their inventions", the Business Owners against the Patentability of Software claim that "the present draft directive is a major threat to small and medium-sized enterprises."