Brussels, 09/11/2004 (Agence Europe) - In view of a forthcoming parliamentary debate next week in Strasbourg, the draft directive on patents for computer assisted inventions (EUROPE yesterday p 14, EICTA - European Information and Communications Technology Industry Association) has launched a campaign to adopt the directive. The industry supports the conclusion of the Kok report on the chance to approve the pending questions, affirmed a press release, which warned that, "there is a real danger that very necessary public and private R&D becomes compromised if dangerously counterproductive changes demanded by the European Parliament in the first reading are agreed to". EICTA is therefore requesting that the political agreement reached by the Council last May is adopted without amendments (EUROPE 19 May p 11). The Director General of EICTA, Mark MacGann highlighted the importance of the directive to future innovation in Europe, given that it involved 2/3 of all inventions in the European hi-tech industry. He denies that the affirmations made by detractors of the directive (notably the Greens: Editor's note) that this would be a mechanism introduced on the sly for software patents. MacGann insisted that software patents had never existed and could never exist as software was already protected by copyright. He added, citing inventions in the sphere of medical equipment, cars, mobile phones, planes and televisions etc, that patents would only be given for purely technical inventions.