[Patents] Re: french views

[PILCH Hartmut phm@a2e.de]

> The amount of time and resources needed to create an invention has
> never been a criteria for determining a patent, 

It has often been suggested by both economists and lawyers that this
should be a criterion.  You even have a German term called "invention
depth" (Erfindungstiefe) aka "invention height" (Erfindungshoehe) in the
patent system, which is supposed to represent such a criterion.  Another
former German criterion was the "contribution to social progress".
It was discarded in the 70s under heavy protests from people who wrote
articles in GRUR saying that the patent system thereby lost its
legitimacy.  The other side's argument was that criteria such as the two
above-mentioned are hard to handle in practise.

> and is idiotic when you think about it - it would reserve the patent
> system to only those with lots of time and money.

No. 
The patent system is supposed to help inventors capture returns.
Thus a poor guy could in theory borrow money to conduct research and then
at the end earn the money back by patent royalties.
This precisely is a legitimating reason for the existance of the patent
system.
 
> Increasingly these discussions are focussing more and more not on
> getting rid of software patents, but all patents.  

Who is intending this?
You accused me of intending it, but I refuted your arguments and you had
nothing to counter.  So it would be unfair to take this up again.

> If that is the intent of this list, we might as well close it down.

There have been many critics of the patent system who proposed scrapping
it entirely, and the number of such radical critics will augment once
more, if fine concepts of limiting it such as those of EPC systematically
worked out by various high courts (such as BGH 1976-81) are muddled.

If muddling these concepts is the intent of the Patnews list, "we" might
as well close it down.  But of course such decisions are entirely up to
you or Aful respectively.

-phm