[Commons-Law] Red Hat and Sun Microsystems Team to Help Defeat European Software Patent Directive

[Venkatesh Hariharan]

Red Hat and Sun Microsystems Team to Help Defeat European Software
Patent Directive

http://www.europe.redhat.com/news/article/431.html

STRASBOURG, FRANCE, JULY 6, 2005 - The European Parliament voted today
to reject the Computer-Implemented Inventions directive, the so-called
software patent directive. Red Hat and Sun Microsystems combined efforts
with the Foundation for a Free Information Infrastructure (FFII) to
bring about this victory for those who value free and open source
software. The Parliamentary rejection represents a request for better
legislation; legislation that will ensure that software "as such" is not
patentable.

Despite the heavy lobbying efforts of big industry, including dominant
software companies favouring ratification of the common position on the
directive, an unamended directive that would permit the patenting of
software, the European Parliament conducted an exercise in democracy,
ensuring that all participants had access and were heard. Parliaments
action today reinforces the need for balanced legislation that ensures a
competitive software industry in Europe.

"This outcome is a clear victory for open source," said Simon Phipps,
Chief Open Source Officer at Sun Microsystems. "It expresses Parliaments
clear desire to provide a balanced, competitive market for software, one
that gives equal access to participants of all sizes. This action
further sustains the clear mandate to our elected officials to assure
that new legislation represents the interests of all, including
consumers and the public and not just big industry."

"The actions of Parliament, and the efforts of our friends at FFII in
bringing about this result, have been simply amazing," said Mark
Webbink, Deputy General Counsel of Red Hat, Inc. "The action of
Parliament affirms that the scope of patentability in the proposed
legislation was too broad, that it is better to have no legislation than
bad legislation, and that there is no connection between innovation and
software patents. We applaud the efforts of all who have contributed to
bring about this successful result."

Sun and Red Hat, both with long histories in the open source community,
set aside their competitive differences in this process. Both companies
felt the interests of free and open source software merited cooperation
at a high level.
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