[Patents] simple questions

[PILCH Hartmut phm@a2e.de]

> >Then why don't they just grant a patent on the invention without reference
> >to a computer program? 
> 
> They do, when that is what the applicant applies for.  But don't
> forget, the Patent Offices don't write the applications - the
> applicants or their patent attorneys do that.  If it complies with the
> law (as interpreted by the Courts), the Patent Office has to grant it,

In fact it is rather the lawcourts that are to blame.  In the EPO case
however, the Technical Board of Appeal is inseparable from the Patent
Office itself.

> regardless of whether the monopoly is narrower than might have been
> allowed.

Adding a "computer program product" subclaim or the like doesn't make a
patent narrower. 
 
> >For something to be a technical invention, it must teach a new way of
> >using natural forces, based on new empirical knowledge.
> 
> This is not a requirement of UK patent law so I cannot really comment.

It is an implication of using the notion of "technicity" as a single
coherent concept explaining the whole list of exception.

Perhaps the UK courts never tried to find such a single concept.  The
German Federal High Court did, and the result was approximately what
I explained above.
 
> >Claiming that you allow computer programs to be patented but not business
> >methods is just another deceptive means of soothing the public.
 
> The UK Patent Office does grant patents for computer programs,
> provided that the program is capable of producing a technical effect
> when run on a computer.  The UK Patent Office does not grant patents
> for methods of doing business whatever the technical advance may be,
> because that is what the Courts in the UK have decided.  

The One-Click method is a method of making certain web applications more
usable.  I wonder based on what criterion the UKPO or the UK courts are
able to tell whether it is a "program with a technical effect" or a
"business method with a technical effect".

Once you no longer require that the technical part itself must be new and
inventive ("core theory" of the German courts), you have given up the only
underlying criterion that is acknowledged by the courts.  Why should you
then make a distinction between inventions whose cores are in different
kinds of non-technical areas?  The border between program logic and
business method is much harder to draw than that between matter and pure
reason, and the Law contains no basis for drawing such a border. Drawing
such a border would in fact be an abuse of law:  you reject the border
that is implicit in the law and create another one that is not in the law.

> It has nothing to do with soothing the public.

It has to do with muddling, cheating and trying to get away without
causing too much of a pulic uproar.  The public can easily judge the
insanity of bismet patents, but it can't easily judge the insanity of
program logic patents.  Thus, restricting the patent system to the latter,
however untenable the borderline may be, is an expedient way for the
patent community to milk the e-commerce cow.

-phm