[Patents] Economic assessment

[PILCH Hartmut phm@a2e.de]

> So why don't you get all of those "concerned" EU politicians who voted
> against software patents to show some real concern and vote them monies
> to allow examiners to do their jobs better?  

We want to write programs and be left free to do that.

> Cynically, I suspect the real reason the EU politicians want to break
> up the EPO is not because

Which EU politicians want to break up the EPO?

> of their attitude towards software patents (how many EU politicians
> really understand modern information processing, mathematics and
> computing - I will tell you - as few as US politicians), but rather 
> because the EU politicians want to divert the big bucks flowing into
> EPO into their national offices (just like US politicians keep on
> stealing US PTO fees).

Which EU politicians want to divert money to national offices?
Btw, I don't believe it is a good idea to keep patent fees in the USPTO.
Patent offices should not work like mega corporations.
Actually the German patent office pays all its money to the state, and
the examination process is financed independently of the patent office
revenues.

> It is easy and not that costly to solve much of the problems with bad
> software patents in the short term.  

Our problem is software patentens, not "bad software patents".
Some are bad because they are trivial, others are bad because they,
although not trivial, still do more harm than good to the public.
An example of the latter is the LZW patent.  That is like patenting
a conjugation of the English language.  You will have to do huge amounts
of unproductive work to get people away from English to Esperanto or from
GIF to PNG.  Meanwhile, you can't incorporate GIF in free software, and a
lot of work is impeded.

> In fact, I bet EPO would be very appreciative if you all pestered the
> EU politicians to help the EPO get to more monies to turn out a higher
> quality software patent. 

I'd rather introduce a simple rule:  the patentee pays a reward to the
first person who busts his patent.  Then we no longer need an EPO or
USPTO with all their long examination periods, costly patent fees and mega
corporation power structure.

> Instead of fighting EPO, you might want to consider how to work with
> them to kill these stupid software patents before they issue - and if
> nothing else, get a nice big multimillion dollar donation from your
> buddies at IBM who soooooooo support patent quality.

Nobody said that they support patent quality.  The whole patent quality
debate is an excuse for IBM and also for Greg Aharonian and a lot of
others who refuse to face the problem that software patents per se need to
be abolished.  Of course IBM can live well with "bad software patents". I
believe they are not asking the question of whether there should be
software patents, and not even whether there should be `good software
patents'.  They are just adapting to the situation, like all big
companies.  Such comapanies are usually rather inert and blind.
 
> Because in the end, the price of not changing 52.c will be the end of
> patents on digital hardware.

Now, this is real FUD, an effort at mobilising the fear of patent
professionals.

Also, I find it quite interesting to note that you are saying "on digital
hardware".  So you do acknowledge that the technicity / tranformation of
matter theory does not kill all patents.

-phm