On the first of September 2003, the European Commission intends to bring in a law making software patents legal. These allow a software company to register what their program does, rather than how it does it, and will severely stifle independent invention. Traditional patents (on inventions) cover that specific invention itself; software patents cover ideas. Instead of patenting a specific mousetrap, you get a patent on "trapping mammals", and then no-one else can build a mousetrap even if they could do it better and cheaper. Software patents are currently illegal ("mathematical methods, schemes and rules for mental activity, methods of doing business and programs for computers are not patentable inventions" according to the law) and yet the European Patent Office has granted 30,000 of them since 1998, directly flouting that same law. The Commission now intend to make them legal, under pressure from big software companies who would like to see independent invention stifled. We, the hackers and hobby programmers, need to have our voice heard.