Wednesday, March 23, 2005

Lessig spoke about this at Etech last week. His point is a good one.  By adopting software patents, all europe succeeds in doing is undercutting their own software indsutry. And since Europe wants to become an economic powerhouse offsetting the USA, their software patents will be like shooting thesmelves in the foot. the "democracy" that is Europe. So despite the fact that the EU Parliament has rejected software patents for Europe, and despite the fact that there is not a qualified majority of member states supporting it, the EU Council has now endorsed their draft of the "Directive on the Patentability of Computer-Implemented Inventions." This struggle continues to astonish me. There's no good economic evidence that software patents do more good than harm. That's the reason the US should reconsider its software patent policy. But why Europe would voluntarily adopt a policy that will only burden its software developers and only benefit US interests is beyond me. They call it a "democracy" that they're building in Europe. I don't see it. Instead, they have created a government of bureaucrats, more easily captured by special interests than anything in the US. [Lessig Blog] 6:55:14 PM