Z:gnu-www-ja-moglen-harvard-speech-2004--99dcb4-The European Commission put fo/en

The European Commission put forward a suggestion for change and harmonization in European patent law which would have made the issuance of patents for inventions practiceable in software very much easier. The European parliament after a lengthy campaign, led in part by the Free Software Movement in Europe &mdash; that's Euro Linux and the Free Software Foundation Europe and a lot of small software houses in Europe benefitting substantially from the new mode of software as a public utility &mdash; a campaign which involved in the end 250,000 petition signatories, the European Parliament decided to say no. And two parties, Greens and Social Democrats, in the European Parliament now understand that patent policy in Europe is a partisan issue. That is to say that there are sides, and that electoral politics and party organization can be conducted around those sides.