Europe Delays Vote to Unify Patent Rules

European Union governments have delayed voting on a proposed law that would define which technological innovations can be patented, after Poland said it was considering withdrawing its support.

The proposed law was endorsed by government leaders this month as an important legislative priority for the sluggish European economy to make it more competitive with the American economy. But an agreement reached in May by the European Union's 25 members now appears to be unwinding because of Poland's possible switch.

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"We are still analyzing the legal procedures," said Wlodzimierz Marcinski, an under secretary at the ministry of science and information technology in Poland. The Polish government does not fully support the text agreed on in May, he said, because according to Polish lawyers, it could open the door to patents on software - something all sides in the debate agree would harm innovation.

But Polish officials do not want to scuttle the proposed law because they consider it necessary for protecting real inventions, as distinct from incremental improvements to computer programs.

"There is a risk," Mr. Marcinski said, "that if we withdraw our support from the text, the directive could be thrown out."

The proposed law, which has become known as the software patent directive because such patents are the central issue, seeks to harmonize patent rules across the European Union. The European Commission, the union's day-to-day executive arm, initially proposed the directive in a form similar to the text agreed to by governments in May, but the European Parliament changed it drastically a year ago during the first of two votes.

It amended the proposal to make it much harder for people to register computer-related inventions, and included a ban on the patenting of all data-processing innovations.

Technology companies, which rely heavily on patent protection, contend that the Parliament's version of the law would make the patenting of valuable inventions, like M.R.I. machines, impossible.

Mark MacGann, the head of the European Information, Communications and Consumer Electronics Technology Industry Associations, said, "We want a law that would prevent software patents but would allow the patenting of inventions that exist in the real world."

The group's main opponents include supporters of open-source software. A loose body of grassroots activists, called the Foundation for a Free Information Infrastructure, has fought an effective campaign to swing the European Parliament around to its position.

The open-source advocates say that Poland is right to back away from the proposal because, they argue, it would make it easier to patent pure software in Europe. "We don't want to stop the patenting of real-world inventions," said James Heald, a member of the foundation's board, "but we do want to prevent software patents."

The group of trade associations, known here as Eicta, is sticking firmly to the text agreed to by the national governments, while the foundation broadly supports the European Parliament's version. But Mr. Heald said there was room to modify the Parliament's position to reach an agreement.

He is holding talks with lawyers who represent the interests of patent holders to try to bridge the gap.

"The two sides are not so incompatible," Mr. Heald said, adding that an agreement was possible with more consultation on both sides of the argument.

National governments were originally expected to vote later this week on making the May agreement binding, but the decision has been delayed until the first half of December, said Magdalena Martinez, a spokeswoman for the European Council of Ministers.

Once governments have reached a formal agreement, the directive is passed back to the European Parliament for a second vote. If its two houses cannot agree, they begin talks on a compromise. The proposed directive is rejected if they still cannot agree.