Legislative notes

As mentioned here last week, there has been a renewed push for the adoption of software patents in Europe. It now appears that the final scenes will be played out even more quickly than expected: according to the European Parliament Observatory, the full plenary vote on software patents could happen as soon as June 30. That does not leave a whole lot of time for concerned Europeans to contact their MEPs and get their feelings across. According to some sources (see, for example, this writeup by Xavi Drudis Ferran), it should not be assumed that the plenary session will simply rubber-stamp the software patent directive. Efforts to educate parliament members over the next few days could have a significant effect.

On the other side of the pond, representatives Zoe Lofgren and John Dolittle have announced their intent to introduce the Public Domain Enhancement Act into Congress. The PDEA was covered here in the June 5 Weekly Edition; it would require that copyrights be renewed after fifty years. Any material for which the copyrights are not explicitly renewed would pass into the public domain. This law would not reduce the copyright protection available to anybody; it would just ensure that works which are no longer being commercially exploited become part of the intellectual commons. The idea should not be particularly controversial, but the media industry is likely to lobby against it just the same. So it could be a long path between the introduction of the PDEA into Congress and its becoming law. That introduction is a necessary step in the right direction, however.

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