Proposed legislation which would have allowed companies to patent software innovations has been rejected by an overwhelming margin by the European Parliament, despite pro-bill lobbying from companies including Microsoft and Nokia. The European Commission has now pledged that it will scrap the bill entirely in favour of attempting to draw up new patent legislation, rather than attempting to amend the existing bill.

Software is already protected by strong copyright laws in Europe, and many small companies and open source developers feared that the introduction of software patents as outlined by the legislation would stifle their ability to innovate and compete.