[Patents] Economic assessment

[Gregory Aharonian srctran@world.std.com]

>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.

Exactly my point.  This argument is not against just software
patents, but other technology areas as well.  For example, I will
bet you anything that I can take the definitions of "technicity"
and argue successfully in a German court that digital circuit
diagrams are little more than computer source code (using standard
definitions of software and whatever the dictionary definition
the German courts invented for "technicity"), and therefore digital
hardware circuits should not be patentable if software isn't
patentable.

Beyond dictionary definitions, one could additionally argue that
most hardware circuits being patented are simple combinations of
well known digital hardware techniques, especially as hardware
developers are increasingly using large libraries of hardware
circuits in a reusable way to develop new systems, little different
than people taking libraries of Open Source software to build new
systems.  The time and money to develop new working hardware
systems is the same order of magnitude for developing new software
systems that actually are debugged.

In short, if attacking software patents is an attack on all 
software and hardware patents, and given the many similarities
between digital and analog circuits, an attack on all electronics
patents.  And it all does relate to 52c.  The term "computer
program", i.e. software, source code, etc., can be interpreted
in very broad ways in light of CAD, CAE and CASE tools to cover
not only just traditional software, but digital circuits, and
a variety of mechanical and chemical designs as well.

In fact, your campaign can fail if supporters of software patents
start attacking patents in other technology areas as being little
more than "software", which is a very easily winnable argument.
That suddenly turns the campaign into one against all patents,
which will force European politicians to seriously think about
these issues (instead of the knee-jerk mindless voting they did
earlier this week), and probably run away scared.

Most of the arguments made against software patents in this forum
apply to most other areas of technology.  Fighting then against
software patents as an isolated activity doesn't seem to be a 
wise thing to do.  And to make clear, I want to see all areas of
patenting examination cleaned up, to get rid of the crappy bad
patents being issued in all fields, done first, so we can then
argue about the patentability and philosophy of those far fewer
in number patents that issue.  I suspect most complaints would
go away, especially with the software patents.  All it takes is
making the existing system run more efficiently.

Greg