The EC proposal is still nebulous and certain elements are not exactly set in stone yet. The directive is the responsibility of the  Drectorate for Internal Market headed by Commissioner Bolkenstein and managed by John Mogg. Mogg is a known supporter of software patents. This clueless individual stated in a paper given in 1996 that "For software inventions, the patent systems in the US and Japan are more favourable than those in Europe. This means that Europe will lose ground to the US and Japan in the field of computer software technology unless the patent laws in Europe are clarified." Obviously we are dealing with a complete idiot who believes the rubbish that the PR departments of big software companies excrete. Hasn´t this guy ever heard of Linux? It is the US and Japan that are losing out to Europe.

It is difficult to take the European Commission seriously. The last European Commission were so corrupt and depraved that they should have been taken out and shot. The European parliament apparently took extraordinary action to have them removed and replaced. This whole software patents thing seems to be motivated by large moribund software companies. These people just cannot be trusted to represent the interests of the European citizens. They want to destroy the European software industry by introducing a software patents systems that would only benefit parasite lawyers and non-innovative companies like Microsoft. They are traitors and should be treated as such.