[Developer]

The Irish EU Council presidency has circulated a paper among governental ministries which contains alternative suggestions to the amendments on the directive "on the patentability of computer-implemented inventions" passed by the European Parliament (EP). In contrast to the EP version, the council version permits unlimited patentability and patent enforceability. Following the current version, "computer-implemented" algorithms and business methods would be inventions in the sense of patent law, and the publication of a functional description of a patented idea would constitute a patent infringement. Protocols and data formats could be patented and would then not be freely usable even for interoperability purposes.

http://swpat.ffii.org/papiere/europa.../index.en.html

[alien]

I tried reading a little of that document, but obviously it takes a while to go through it. (And I study engineering, not law.)

Do you know what this will mean in practice? In what way will patents differ from copyright in the software world, and what kind of work possible today won't be possible with software patents?