FFII has the following terse report, which I'm sure will be supplemented eventually, and it looks like it's still a ballgame: JURI vote on amendments to Rocard report on software patents directive
Brussels, June 20th, 2005 -- The Legal Affairs Committee today voted on amendments to the Rocard report on the software patents directive and approved a number of amendments. A last minute manoeuvre by Klaus-Heiner Lehne MEP to move the vote to Tuesday, because then more MEPs in favour of unlimited patentability would be present, failed. The situation was quite hectic, with several last minute compromise amendments making the rounds.
Date and time
Brussels, PHS, P5B001
15h00
Report
“field of technology” has been defined as "a field of applied natural science".
Many proponents of unlimited patentability had been lobbying for defining it as "applied exact science", as that would also include mathematics, business methods etc. This amendment makes sure that we can exclude software patents without running afoul of TRIPs. For background, you can try this site or Out-Law.com's coverage. And if you wish to read Michel Rocard's draft report [PDF, 28 pages], you can, if you can read French, which I know many of you can. UPDATE: The FFII page has now been updated, with a more detailed list of what happened.
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