EU rejects software patent directive

The European Parliament has, unwisely, rejected the software patent directive ("Computer-Implemented Inventions directive") by a huge margin. Here's a link to a story.

Here's a link to a story in the FT, for those who (wisely) have a subscription.

Update: I have to admit that I haven't been following this issue very closely, and the politics here have been very complicated. From my perspective, passing the Directive as written and without harmful amendments would have been the best case scenario. However, passing it with the addition of several harmful amendments would have been worse than not passing it at all. The failure of the Directive leaves the status quo intact, which is fine in some EU countries such as the U.K., but not fine in others.

In general, consistency and predictability is best for markets, so a consistent policy throughout the EU would have been best. I'll try to post more comments later.