From phm@a2e.de Thu, 25 May 2000 20:26:19 +0000 (/etc/localtime)
Date: Thu, 25 May 2000 20:26:19 +0000 (/etc/localtime)
From: PILCH Hartmut phm@a2e.de
Subject: [Patents] For patents...

> "The only thing that keeps us alive is our brilliance.  The only thing that
> protects our brilliance is our patents." Edwin Land, 1967.
> 
> This is still widely distributed.
> I must precise, however, that it comes out of the pharmaceutical world,
> where patents are really what protects discoveries after long and costly
> research years.

Patents monopolise inventions, not discoveries.

Even in the pharmaceutical world many of these inventions are not the
result of long and costly research years.  Many are quite trivial. But
still this can be acceptable, because the whole industry needs a rather
complicated organisational apparatus anyway, so organising it into along
the lines of patent apparatusses seems natural.
 
> The point that should be made as clear as possible, and often repeated,
> concerns the differences encountered in the IT fields (i.e. the 
> fundamental difference between the patenting of a product, obtained
> after long and costly processes, and that of a computer algorithm, or
> even more simply of a technique already used by everybody everyday -like
> the ludicrous patent on the mouse focus reversing the screen bit color).

Even software patent advocates will argue that only brilliant new
algorithms should be patentable.  Some of these (like MP3) are the result
of years of costly research.  Most aren't, but the border you are drawing
here is not one between pharmacy and IT but just between bad and good
patents.  And you supply no clear criteria for drawing it.  If you did,
existing laws would prevent them from being used.

So I believe your argument won't help.  Anyway, even good arguments don't
help much.  Politicians tend to see only the clout that is behind
something.  We need to mobilise, not to argue.

-phm





