[Patents] Some remarks on Vol 1 #284

[Luuk van Dijk Luuk.van.Dijk@xs4all.nl]

Pierre BREESE wrote:

> 
> The trouble comes from people doing "business" without taking in account
> prior IP rights of competitors...
> 

Those rights are only there because a law says so, that
does not make them fair.  The  trouble comes from laws
that unfairly grant legal monopolies, without bringing any
greater profit for society.

If I write a moderately sized piece of software, say 50.000 lines,
of code, a couple of man months of work, there are hundreds of abstract
ideas in there that are possibly currently patented in the US.

Each of these ideas I have come up with by myself as an answer to
my own problems.  It is impossible to check each of these ideas 
for possible claims, and it cannot be fair to require me to do so,
even if a law says I should.

The whole reason for this discussion is that we don't want 
the law to become the problem.

Luuk van Dijk

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