Representing thousands of IT freelancers in the UK, PCG now calls on the UK presidency to withdraw the directive completely and on the Commission to refrain from producing a new and unnecessary patenting proposal.

PCG chairman Simon Juden said, �Independent software developers have been granted a last-minute reprieve: without this vote, the basic tools of their trade would now be owned and controlled by big companies.�

PCG is concerned, however, that a good decision has been reached for the wrong reasons. �This rejection is for many complex reasons to do with Europe�s difficulties after the recent referenda and the European Parliament�s perceived need to assert itself. Without these considerations, a bad directive would almost certainly have become law,� Dr Juden added.

�Lobbying by large companies, and campaigning bodies funded by them, attempted to confuse MEPs about the issue,� he continued.� It is worrying for European democracy that, without the recent crisis, they would have succeeded. The proponents of the directive claimed that they represented the whole IT sector, including SMEs; that software patents were prevented by the directive; and that software patents were essential for SMEs and indeed the competitiveness of the whole EU. These companies were serving their own interests, not Europe�s, and would have used patents to exclude their smaller competitors from the market, reducing the pace of innovation and inflating the price of software in the process.�

PCG has been the only UK trade organisation to lobby actively against software patents. PCG believes that software should not be patentable in principle, that patents would exclude small businesses from the market and that all businesses would have been disadvantaged as the price of software would inevitably have risen as a result of this monopolistic and deeply anti-competitive measure. Under the Lisbon Strategy, the EU wants to become the most competitive knowledge-based economy in the world: by excluding SMEs from developing software, the essential infrastructure of the knowledge economy, it would have dealt this goal a fatal blow. Today�s vote has avoided these disastrous consequences.

PCG regrets that the EP�s first reading has not become law. Dr Juden said, �It would have provided an excellent framework for hi-tech patenting while keeping software outside the scope of patents. The next step for patenting in the EU is not clear, but we feel that an all-encompassing EU patent system which could be extended to software has the potential to be every bit as dangerous as the directive that has just been rejected. We will continue to monitor this issue closely.�