[Patents] 'Antipatents' suggestion discussed on slashdot.

[PILCH Hartmut phm@a2e.de]

> http://slashdot.org/articles/00/09/01/2039205.shtml
> http://voice.media.org/essays/patent.html
> 
> ``Antipatents are simple, a registration mechanism for your open-source
> inventions.  ... Taking the time to document the antipatent prevents some
> clueless corporation from making it their property.  Perhaps a handsome
> certificate, suitable for framing, can be sent with each antipatent for a
> modest fee.' Hargrave and Malamud also call for a formal way for the
> community at large to shout down 'clueless patents.'" Sounds good to me.''

A new word for an old, boring concept.  Programmers are usually even
reluctant about writing documentation.  Let alone patent-like tedious
documentation for every shade of an idea.  And once people really do find
ways to do that, every shade of an idea will really get patented, because
people will find that selling these "anti-patents" to some commercially
oriented patent-fund professionals will be more worthwhile than fighting
the patent system.

Another thing to do is of course time-stamping, as we are doing at

        http://swpat.ffii.org/purci/

in a very primitive way which needs to be improved.  But recording prior
art does not deserve the name "anti-patent".

Like the old discussion about "reducing swpat lifetime to 3-5
years".  Answer: please read TRIPS art 33.

Another clueless discussion is the one about "inventive" vs
"non-inventive" or "good" vs "bad" software patents.

Most of these ideas come from people who think that patents could be
helpful for rewarding intellectual work and that it just takes a few
tricks to reconcile everybody.  They have not realised that advances in
logical/mathematical (i.e. non-technical, not based on new knowledge of
natural forces) thinking should not be considered inventions and that
extending the patent system to this realm necessarily means opening
Pandora'x box.

We need a FAQ to prevent such clueless discussions.

-phm