Europe makes proposals for software patent law.(Brief Article)

The European Commission (EC) has proposed a Directive that sets out common rules for the protection by patents of computer-implemented inventions. The proposed Directive would harmonize the way in which national patent laws deal with inventions using software, and clearly differentiate patent law from the law that applies to the protection of intellectual property.

The Commission says "at the moment inventions can already be patented by applying to either the European Patent Office (EPO) or the national patent offices of the Member States", but the detailed conditions