[Patents] simple questions

[Gregory Aharonian srctran@world.std.com]

>Please us with your intelligent opinions about NEXT thirty years if
>software patenting is allowed next month: FUTURE.

Glad to opinion.  Whatever the EC/EPO does with 52c, it will have no
effect on IT innovation in Europe for the next thirty years.  One of
thefew cases where the past is a good predictor of the future.  Same
here in the United States - whatever problems are being caused by a
faulty software patent examination process, it has not had much of an
effect on IT productivity and won't have much of an effect on IT
productivity going into the future.

Look at the number of software products on the market, the number of
pages of publications for IT, the number of jobs, etc.  All have been
steadily rising for years, and will only drop for non-patent reasons
(like the NASDAQ crashing or the Internet mania losing its potency).

Greg Aharonian