"This is absolutely disgusting," said Jonas Maebe, board member of lobby group the Foundation for a Free Information Infrastructure. "Things would be much more easier [sic] if we scrapped all those rules and simply wrote down 'The Council presidency and Commission can do together whatever they like'."
Lobbying over the draft Directive, often called the Software Patents Directive, has evolved from voicing fears that it will import a liberal regime of software and business method patenting into the EU, to expressing concerns over the ability of the Commission and Council of Ministers to ignore the views of the elected European Parliament – which last year extensively amended the draft Directive.
European Trade Ministers rejected the Parliamentary amendments in May, but since then political manoeuvring has kept the proposals off the Council agenda, where it was due to be included as an "A" item, being one that is voted through without discussion.
In the meantime, MEPs have been fighting their corner, and opponents of the draft were heartened last month when the European Parliament overwhelmingly approved a motion asking the Parliamentary President to tell the Commission that the current proposals need to be reviewed.
If granted, the request would have started the Parliamentary debate afresh.
However, the Commission was not bound to comply with the request and Mr Barroso, the Commission President, confirmed early this month that he would be sticking to the usual procedures. Furthermore, he said, the measure was likely to be pushed through at today's meeting of the Competitiveness Council.
As predicted, the draft Directive has now been approved, with the result that it will now be returned to the Parliament for a second reading – a procedure that allows a much shorter time scale for debate and requires larger majorities for amendments than that offered by the requested first reading.
Today's decision was by a qualified majority. Spain voted against and the Austrian, Italian and Belgian delegations abstained.
The news was welcomed by Simon Gentry of the pro-patent Campaign for Creativity.
"It has been a frustrating period for our supporters who vehemently believe arguments against the Directive have been deeply misleading, and that the debate has been subverted into an anti-patent debate," he said. "The Directive explicitly states that software itself will not be patentable, but inventions that use software will be. The Directive's objective has always been to ensure there is a clear legal framework in place to support the existing practice of the European Patent Office."
He continued: "The European Parliament now has to consider whether it really wants to be responsible for stripping Europe's innovative high-tech companies of their patent protection just as other parts of the world, notably India and China are introducing CII patents to encourage and protect their innovators."
EICTA, a European industry body representing Microsoft, IBM and many other tech companies, also welcomed today's decision by the EU Competitiveness Council to adopt a Common Position on the proposed Directive.
Director General Mark MacGann said: "We believe the Common Position provides a balanced framework to protect and encourage innovation throughout Europe."
However, some MEPs have already sworn to give the proposals a rough ride at the second reading.