On Fri, May 18, 2001 at 02:33:54PM +0200, loic@gnu.org wrote:
karin kosina writes:
maybe that's a stupid question, but *who* will make the final
decision about whether software patents will be legal? I figure it's the European Commission, but is that true?
Loic's answer is correct but in practice it is a lot more complicated as with all these matters. It is never as finally decided as it looks. Probably we should seek a more specialisted forum to discuss this.
The mentioned exclusion below for instance did not prevent the European patent office from granting a huge number of patents which actually are patenting computer programs.
Bernhard
From http://www.fsfeurope.org/swpat/swpat.en.html
In Europe, the CONVENTION ON THE GRANT OF EUROPEAN PATENTS (EUROPEAN PATENT CONVENTION) (published in 1973 and revised December, 17th 1991) explicitly excludes programs for computers from the field of patentable inventions (article 52.2). This convention is voted by representatives of each european country and is binding for all of them.
Therefore it is not the European Commission. However the European Commission has a great influence and in that respect plays an important role in the final decision.
I added the fact that the European Commission does not rule this case to the page.