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A draft proposal that could quite easily have allowed the broad patenting of software was due to be rubber stamped today when the Agricultural Council met today. However, Poland's minister of Information Society and Technology, Wlodzimierz Marcinski, turned up personally to the meeting to request that the proposed Directive be withdrawn from the agenda.

It's a small victory: the draft proposal could still be adopted in a meeting of the Agricultural Council tabled for January or by the Competitiveness Council in March.

However, opponents of the current draft are grateful for any stay they can achieve, while they drum up support for their campaign to have software patents on 'pure' software and 'business methods' ejected from the Directive 'On the Patentability of Computer-Implemented Inventions'.

Since an initial vote of support for the current draft back in

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May, several member states have expressed doubts as to the benefits of making software patentable, fearing the stifling of innovation in European software if developers decide it too risky to build new software because of the risk of patent infringement. Additionally, leaders of the Open Source movement, including Linus Torvalds, inventor of the Linux kernel, have been outspoken in their objections.

Jacob Hallén, CEO of Strakt AB, a Swedish software company with 20 employees, and member of FFII Sweden, is one such opponent.

'By their clear sighted action, Poland has strengthened the democracy of the European Union. An attempt to muscle through a bad directive with very questionable support has been thwarted. We now have a chance to build a process which results in a directive on Software Patents that has wide popular support and one which takes into consideration the views and needs of the new members of the union, as well as the old ones.'

The current Dutch presidency has maintained a strong grip on the Directive's progress. As an A-item, the current draft will remain unchanged, despite no longer having a majority in favour. Such A-items carry the initial voting weight from when they were first adopted.

The hope then is that a member state will either insist the Directive is downgraded to a B-item, in which case votes will have to be retaken, or that the upcoming Luxembourg presidency will take a different approach to the Dutch one.