From ramon@jl1.quim.ucm.es  Fri Nov 24 16:01:31 2000
Date: Fri, 24 Nov 2000 17:01:31 +0100
From: Ram'on Garc'ia Fern'andez ramon@jl1.quim.ucm.es
Subject: [Patents] Economic assessment

On Fri, Nov 24, 2000 at 12:39:20AM -0500, Gregory Aharonian wrote:
> I would guess in most field, the bad patents far outweigh the good patents,
> and one can question whether society as a whole gains a net benefit.
> 
> Which makes this line of attack on software patents solely, unjust.

No. Software is worse than other fields because of its nature.  In
software it is very common to solve a problem using a combination of
existing methods. The result of applying the law of "non-obvious" (US)
is that we have patents on simple methods (do not confuse `simple' and
`obvious') that any competent programmer could find himself.

Although the same problem can happen in other industries, in software
it happens everyday.


Ramon




