OT: Council Presidency Adopts Software Patent Agreement Against Council's Rules

Some context, for those of us who don't know what this is about?

The context is "proposed law on patents". The problematic spot is wheter
it allows pure/trivial software patents or not.
Besides this core issue the overall procedure doesn't look very
democratic: the counil simply ignored the votes of the european
parliament and many local parliaments (eg. germany).

---From http://swpat.ffii.org/index.en.html
While the EU Parliament has proposed a clear exclusion of software
patents, the Commission and Council have ignored the Parliament's
proposal and reinstated the most uncompromisingly pro-patent text in May
2004. However this text does not enjoy the support of a qualified
majority of member states. Yet the Council has refused to renegotiate
and is still trying to push the text through. Meanwhile the European
Parliament has asked for a restart of the procedure. The Council and
Commission still seem inclined to ignore the Parliament's request and to
interpret the EU's rules of procedure in an anti-democratic spirit.
---
Today the council adopted the software patent agreement.


Colin Fleming schrieb:

Some context, for those of us who don't know what this is about?