The subsequent failure of the European Parliament to develop an acceptable definition of what was meant by the word technical illustrates the difficulty inherent in attempting to do so.

On 24 September 2003, the European Parliament passed the directive in a heavily amended form,[5] which placed significant limits on the patentability of software.

Under the codecision procedure, both the European Parliament and the Council of Ministers (representing national Governments) must approve a text in identical terms in order for a proposal to become law.

Proponents, also, felt that the amended version contained too many ambiguities to be capable of meeting the original purpose of the Directive, which was to harmonise the law across Europe.

[11] On 7 December 2004, the Belgian Minister of Economic Affairs, Marc Verwilghen, stated that no Council decision would be taken until 2005 "for the reason that the qualified majority does not exist anymore".

[12] Statements expressing reservations were attached to this Common Position by Belgium (which abstained), France (which hoped for further changes to the directive), the Netherlands (where the parliament requested their representative vote against), Poland (which was opposed until recent diplomatic pressure), Hungary and Latvia.

Due to the expressed reservations and especially to opposition from Poland, whose Minister of Science and Information Technology made a special journey to Brussels to demand that the directive be dropped from the agenda, the council's vote was postponed "indefinitely".

On 2 February 2005, JURI, the Legal Affairs Committee of the European Parliament, voted 19–1 in favour of asking the commission to withdraw the directive and restart the process.

Although Poland stated it would only oppose this if other countries raised an objection, reports of opposition from Denmark, the Netherlands and Spain ensured that the common position was not on the agenda for that meeting of the commission.

The common position was thus adopted without debate, and referred to the European Parliament for a second reading, with dissenting statements and caveats from a number of countries.

According to the Financial Times, this "vote marks a turning point in the protracted battle over the law, which has split the software industry and sparked severe recriminations.

[15] The vote was the result of a compromise between the different parties: those in favour of software patents feared a text that would heavily limit its scope, while those against rejected the whole principle.

... Parliament has today voted for the status quo, which preserves the current system that has served well the interests of our 10,000 member companies, both large and small.

[23] Figures who have supported the campaign against software patents in Europe include Tim Berners-Lee, developer of the World Wide Web; Florian Müller, a free software lobbyist; the Computer & Communications Industry Association, a not for profit international tech trade association, and Linus Torvalds, creator of the Linux kernel.

[citation needed] As the directive was rejected, pre-existing law has remained in place, and computer-implemented inventions are currently governed by Article 52 of European Patent Convention.