The European Parliament’s 26-member JURI committee voted in favor of a restart for the directive on the patentability of computer implemented innovations, which is designed to standardize technology patent laws across the European Union, but contains a loophole that – according to critics – would allow widespread software patents.

This is like Rocky II with an instant rematch, commented Florian Mueller, campaign manager with the NoSoftwarePatents.com anti-patent group, adding that the vote showed that there was strong cross-party political will against the directive as the vote was passed with only two votes against and one abstention.

Mueller also compared the vote to a soccer team scoring a last-minute goal to tie the score. Unfortunately we cannot score another goal 60 seconds later, he told ComputerWire. In our case it’s going to go into extra time and it could take years.

Requests for comment from the European Information & Communications Technology Industry Association (EICTA) and its Patents4Innovation group, which had been lobbying for the directive, were not met, but other supporters of the directive expressed their frustration.

People are very disappointed, said Simon Gentry of Campaign for Creativity, a group set up to support intellectual property rights for individuals and smaller businesses. For most of us supporters it means at least another 18 months of patent instability.

The complex rules of European political procedures mean that a number of options are now open for the future of the directive. First the President of the European Parliament will write to the European Commission confirming the request to restart the process.

The Commission does not have to agree to the request, however, and could decide to push ahead with getting the directive ratified by the EU Council of Ministers. Mueller doubted that would be the outcome, however, especially given the opposition to the directive among some Council members, including Poland.

Either side of the New Year Poland twice stepped in to delay the directive being adopted as a common position of the EU Council, arguing that more time was needed to discuss the implications of the precise wording of the directive. Poland’s intervention enabled enough of a delay to allow the European Parliament’s JURI vote.

According to the EU’s co-decision procedure the EU Council of Ministers and the European Parliament must approve the directive. Disagreements between the two groups as to whether the wording of the directive properly defines what constitutes a technical contribution that would make an invention patentable have been at the heart of the debate.

In May 2004 the Council removed European Parliament amendments from the directive that sought to clarify the definition, on the way to negotiating a political agreement on the directive. According to critics, the removal of those amendments left the directive open to potentially allowing the patenting of all software.

Aside from pushing ahead with the directive as it stands, the European Commission could decide to agree to the European Parliament’s demand and restart the political process by submitting the same or a new directive to the Parliament. Alternatively it could withdraw the directive entirely and kill the process.

The Commission has threatened to do that before as a means of pushing forward proceedings, but Mueller doubted that it would do so again as it still wants to standardize and take control of patent laws across the European Union.

Another option would be to encourage negotiations between the Council of Ministers and the European Parliament to reach an agreement on the wording of the directive, potentially asking the Parliament to withdraw its request to restart the process if the Council agrees to amend its position.

Mueller was confident that negotiations might be possible. These three institutions could agree on that, he said. But Gentry was not so sure: In my view the atmosphere in the European Parliament is so poisonous with regards to intellectual property right now that I don’t think anybody could get anything through, he said.

A spokesperson for the Council of Ministers said it was up to the Commission to respond to the vote and declined to comment further, while a spokesperson for the European Commission said that it was keeping its options open and would not be pushed into a response until it received the letter from the President of the European Parliament.