“In a parliamentary hearing in the Netherlands two weeks ago, a
majority of coalition and opposition party members of parliament
instructed the Dutch secretary of state for economic affairs to
arrange thorough obviousness and novelty tests in the patent system
before allowing any software patents, and to actively promote this
view in the European Union.”
“This is one of the best moves the Dutch Parliament ever made
with regards to Information Technology” said Luuk van Dijk,
spokesman on software patents for the Dutch Open Source Society. In
a novel display of hacker political power, the Open Source Society
has been effectively lobbying Parliament on the software patent
issue.”
“The test criteria are to be drafted by FENIT, the dutch IT
industry organisation, and VOSN, who got the item on the Dutch
political agenda in the first place. Clearly the 30,000 existing
software patents and their level of absurdity are now on the
political agenda.”