Fitting in with the topic of patents and copyright etc, I thought I'd briefly mention that there is a similar proposal under way in the US about patenting software.

Paraphrasing from the linked article, the US system requires that the patentable piece of software must "simply be within the technological arts" and "no specific technological contribution is needed"

Thats more than a little scary to me.

Fortunately the EU have just rejected this as, fortunately, the powers that be got some advisers in and actually listened. I certainly hope that it gets reconsidered in the US.

Not coming from the US I don't know as much about it as I would like but I do feel the sentiments expressed in this thread so far certainly apply.

For more info see here

I was concerned that the US policy was going to be blanket across Europe and I'm glad this was not the case.