European Parliament against Software Patents

Today the European Parliament did not pass the draft of the EU Commission on software patents, as for example The Spiegel reports. From a mail of the Free Software Foundation Europe:

After years of struggle, the European Parliament finally rejected the software patent directive with 648 of 680 votes: A strong signal against patents on software logic, a sign of lost faith in the European Union and a clear request for the European Patent Office (EPO) to change its policy: the EPO must stop issuing software patents today.

Also read on epatents blog about this story. The FFII offers some a pretty good background on software patents.