The future of EU patents

Infoworld has a summary of the upcoming debate about the EU patent standard. Looks like the US and Japan may end up with a less stringent standard for patentable software. Discussion at slashdot.

I find it interesting that media corporations were very efficient at getting the US to move copyright extension in line with European Term Limits (or at least that was their claim). Software business interests don't appear to hold as much clout in the EU as media corporations do in the US.