From nico@monnet.to Mon, 29 May 2000 17:59:51 +0200 (CEST)
Date: Mon, 29 May 2000 17:59:51 +0200 (CEST)
From: Nicolas MONNET nico@monnet.to
Subject: [Patents] A lil' rant about "inventors"

Who are the main proponents of software patents? Who's so "deathly (sic)
afraid"[1] of having their invention stolen?

I'm not sure if I can say for sure, but I remember seeing those of the old
school in tradeshows such as Concours Lpine[2], where hundreds of mostly
loonies congregate to show their amazing inventions and possibly win a
prize. Most of them have reinvented for the 1234th time the automatic
butter slicing engine or the Rolodex. And they sure are really proud of
it, and do not understand why no investor want to fund their ventures ...

In the Internet age, I meet lots of those loonies, as they know me for
being an "Internet wizard". Sure, they have the greatest-idea-that-
nobody-ever-thought-of, which will probably turn out to be the 12th[3]
group-buying website of the month. What's even more silly, those loonies
usually don't have any idea of what it would take to build such a business
-- and I'm not just talking about the technical side of things. Case in
point: one of those guys had such a great idea, he wanted me to help him
make it, but *of course* could'nt tell me what it was because he was
afraid of having his invention stolen. I just hung up the phone at this
point, laughing. He called back, and eventually told me his great idea,
and even asked me if he could get "something like a patent on it" to make
sure nobody would steal his idea. 

Well, hang on, his idea was to have people bet on football matches online.
"Would they pay money for this?" -- you bet they would, with their credit
cards. Of course, it did'nt occur to our patent-seeking "inventor" that
such a business was severely restricted in France. He was utterly
disappointed when I informed him of this little detail. 

So I guess that's why we have to enable software patents. No matter it
will put free software developpers who are foolish enough to believe in
sharing knowledge at risk. No matter it has never proven useful. No. We
have to preserve "invention". 

Indeed, it would be really too stupid that the world miss the next
Internet-based electrical bread slicer. We can't afford it. 


==
Notes:
[1]
http://www.oreillynet.com/pub/a/patents/2000/05/24/PizzoFiles.html?page=3

[2]
http://www.itnetwork.fr/lepine

[3]
In France alone, I can think of clust.com, koobuy.com, uniondream.com,
letsbuyit.com ... probably a few more as well ... 





