From epa98@doc.ic.ac.uk  Sat Nov 25 11:15:06 2000
Date: Sat, 25 Nov 2000 11:15:06 +0000 (GMT)
From: Edward Avis epa98@doc.ic.ac.uk
Subject: [Patents] Economic assessment

On Fri, 24 Nov 2000, Gregory Aharonian wrote:

>>Since the current quality of software patents from the EPO is very poor,
>>wouldn't you agree that *for the time being* there should not be
>>software patents in Europe, at least not until the EPO has cleaned up
>>its act and hired examiners with some degree of clue?
>
>No, because solving these problems at the USPTO and the EPO are not that
>difficult or costly.

But - I ask again - shouldn't this problem be solved *first*, before an
extension of patentability?  Otherwise there will be a gap during which
software patents are legalized but the EPO continues to grant large
numbers of very bad patents.  This gap could last a very long time,
indeed I doubt there would be any incentive at all for the EPO to sort
things out, since their source of 'revenue' is from patent applications.

>First, I have met many of the software examiners
>at EPO, and all of them have high "degress of clue", with advanced
>degress and many years of experience.  Examiner quality is not the
>problem.

I don't doubt that many of them are competent, but there must be a
significant number who are not.  How else can you explain the patents
exhibited in the swpat horror gallery?

I defy you to pick one of these patents and say with a straight face
that the examiner who granted it was competent at his job.

>Rather, it is the examiner's access, and time to consider, the prior art
>that is the problem.  The examiner need the actual (non-patent) prior art
>item in hand, on their desk, to issue a rejection.

That sounds like a serious flaw to me.  It looks like laziness of the
patent office (or insufficient funding, if you want to be kinder) is
sufficient reason for patents to be granted.

>Because in the end, the price of not changing 52.c will be the end of
>patents on digital hardware.

Hello?  52 excludes patents on programs for computers.  Not things which
some people consider to be equivalent to programs for computers, or
things which might implement the same functionality as programs for
computers.

-- 
Ed Avis
epa98@doc.ic.ac.uk





