FISH AND MICROCHIPS

The Register reports that the EU is due to give its final approval to the Software Patent Directive tomorrow (Tuesday). Bizarrely though, it will be the Agriculture and Fisheries Committee that will take the decision. The reason for this is that the Competition Commission, which would ordinarily be responsible for the Directive, does not meet again during 2004 and the Dutch are keen to have this Directive down on their tally before they relinquish the Presidency of the EU.

A fish comments: "... but will the Competition Commission be setting EU fishing quotas?"

The IPKat says that this all sounds a bit fishy (yum). What�s the point of having a scrutiny process if, when the specialists can�t make it, ministers with entirely unrelated portfolios can do the job instead.



More evidence of the fish/computer nexis here, here and here