looking back at the software patents directive

An academic writing a paper has asked me questions about the software patents directive. So I've replied to him, and have turned my answers into a webpage: software patents, looking back.

As far as I know he was not involved in this issue until after the directive was rejected, so it provided me with the opportunity to look back and consider what happened - starting from scratch.

I'm hoping to turn it into a complete post-directive essay, but I don't know when I'll get the time, so I've put it online in it's raw form. I just turned his questions into headings.

One interesting thing is how much time people spent talking about things that don't matter. "Harmonisation" is one example, it's a word that everyone said, but nobody actually cared about. History and interpretation of world trade agreements such as TRIPS are another thing. History has to be looked it because we have to know what we've previously agreed to do, but in the case of software patenting, it was clear that history and TRIPS contained nothing clear, and nothing binding, about whether software functionality can be patented.

It will be improved in the future, but for now I hope that page contains some useful information for some people. At the very least, the references section contains links to some key documents.

-- 
Ciarán O'Riordan,
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