German Politicians Challenging EU Software Patentability Directive

According to an October 21, 2004 article from ZDNet UK, "The four main political parties in Germany are supporting the fight against European software patents. . . . The changes proposed by the German parties are that computer programs on their own should not be patented, and that a technical invention must involve a physical change -- not merely a software, business process, algorithms or data processing activity." According to Axel Horn's reading of the Heise Newsticker report, they are promoting a radical cutback of the patentability of computer-implemented inventions by introducing a narrow definition of the concept of "technical contribution.

Clcik here for the latest news in German and here for the machine translation into English.