EU Software Patent Directive selon Rocard

This is good, on the face of it. It appears that Rocard has found a way to legislate to protect computer invention without making software patentable [merely copyrightable]. Light at the end of the tunnel, I hope. Maybe it'll even persuade the USA to change its legislation giving a way out of the morass of trivial and pre-emptive patenting going on there.
"Rocard's outline contains all the necessary ingredients for a directive that achieves what most member state governments say they want to achieve: to exclude computer programs from patentability while allowing computer-controlled technical inventions to be patented. Already in the title of his paper, Rocard proposes to replace the misleading term 'computer-implemented inventions' by 'computer-controlled inventions', and the report itself goes to the heart of the matter. Rocard explains the difference between applied natural science and data processing, and, from there solves the legislative problem in a consistent and adequate manner, delivering what programmers, economists and the vast majority of companies in software and related industries want to see. It is unusual for an economist and former French prime minister to take up a fairly special, difficult-to-communicate problem with such seriousness and moral courage."
Rapporteur Rocard publishes preview of Parliament's Software Patent Directive Position: