A Wednesday session of the European Parliament will vote on 60 amendments, beginning a long and drawn out process to determine the status of software patents.
   Demonstrators from across Europe are converging on Strasbourg, Germany to influence a European Parliament vote, in what's likely to be a long and drawn out process to determine the status of software patents.
The vote will take place Wednesday, but most observers expect the debate to continue for months. The vote isn't expected to be a straight up or down affair, as some 60 amendments are expected to come to the floor.

There are three likely scenarios, explained Florian Mueller, campaign manager of Nosoftwarepatents.com. They are: an absolute majority vote could end the effort to abolish or reduce software patents, amendments by parliament would insure that the process continues through various EU bodies, or a failure to make amendments by parliament could mean the present software patent process could become law.

Mueller said the overall goal of his organization, which has heavy representation from open source backers, is to eliminate software patents. "But I'm not against patents on technical inventions in a field of natural science even if software is part of that," he said.

On the opposing side are some large firms with hefty patent portfolios; they favor software patents and want little change in the existing European patent laws. Although Microsoft isn't front and center in the debate, the whole issue of software patents revolves to a large extent around the software colossus and its growing patent portfolio.