[Patents] natural forces

[PILCH Hartmut phm@a2e.de]

> Since it's getting-at-Hartmut-Pilch time, may I add to Greg's comments one 
> of my own: it may have escaped some people that what Hartmut is advocating 
> is a return to older German law, and not just for Germany but for the whole 
> of Europe.

The EPC and the EPO guidelines are largely based on this German law
tradition.
 
> He advocates a "theory of technicity which demands that the inventive core 
> of the solution be situated in the area of directly using natural forces 
> for 
> a causal effect". Nobody but a few German lawyers has ever understood what 
> this gobbledegook means.

Nobody in society understands what patent lawyer gobbledegook means.  
This is one reason why patent lawyers are engaging in such a lot of
dishonest double-talk: they have not been trained to think and talk in
terms that can be understood let's say by programmers. 

On the other hand, people in the patent business dislike certain common
concepts that, as a result, everybody except for themselves understands
very well.  Such as the classical separation between matter and mind,
represented in all modern philosophies from Descartes to Popper,
represented in American, Japanese and European patent tradition with one
or the other wording.  In the US, it is/was requirement that patents 
pertain to the "transformation of matter".
 
> I was at a conference last year where even Dr Tauchert, the head of the 
> computing group in the DPA, squirmed and tried to rewrite this definition. 

Tauchert is one of the prominent and vocal advocates of patent expansion
in Germany.

> He clearly understood that it was drafted in the days of steam engines and 
> was of no relevance today. 

This may be said of the whole patent system, which needs a general
overhaul.  Yet, the distinction between the physical and logical world,
between mind and matter, is an eternal one, whose relevance never changed
in human history.

> So why are we being asked to support something that nobody understands
> and which even the DPA is edging away from?

You are being asked to support something that everybody around you
understands.  Patent law should not refrain from using concepts of general
value, if such concepts are available and there is not a strong reason to
use different ones, as Gert Kolle explained very well in the article that
I keep recommending and that you must have read and chosen not to
understand.  Here is the URL again:

        http://swpat.ffii.org/vreji/papri/grur-kolle77de.html

Your and Greg's choice to misunderstanding basic philosophical concepts is
increasingly becoming irrelevant, as the question is becoming a question
of public policy rather than of patent expert gobbledegook.

-phm