[Patents] Economic assessment

[PILCH Hartmut phm@a2e.de]

> Those in the free software movement might want to break out of their
> shells and talk to researchers and developers in other areas, like
> biotech.  Their complaints, their actual suffering, are far greater,
> than what is happening in software.  Just look at the complaints 
> coming out of the Human Genome projects.  It would be of more benenfit
> to more people to harass the energies against software patents against
> all problems areas of patenting.  A tougher fight, but one that will
> have more lasting impact.

This is quite correct.
We are ready for it, just waiting for those other researchers and
developpers to come out of their shells.
By reasserting the "technicity" or "transformation of matter" requirement,
we have been proposing delimiting criteria for the patent system that go
far beyond software, as you have noticed.  And when talking to some
engineers they do find that it would be a good thing to get rid of
mechanical patents that are just expressions of algorithms and not based
on a new causality found through experimentation.  But such engineers are
not vocal at the moment.  Most of them have submitted to reality and
wouldn't want to waste much thought on trying to change this reality.
It is only the software people who are inspired by some hope.  But that
may change, if we work hard and get enough time. 

-phm