[Patents] Re: your mail

[Bernard Lang Bernard.Lang@inria.fr]

On Sun, Nov 26, 2000 at 01:45:08PM +0100, PILCH Hartmut wrote:

> > To quote Willie (Lord) Aldous, "I have great difficulty in
> > understanding what 'technical' means". Courts, by the way (except some
> > German courts who should know better) are usually very careful to
> > avoid definitions which might make a rod for their own backs.  This
> > isn't just true in patents.
> 
> The word "technical"  can be used to create confusion, and this has been
> amply done by the patent law community.  This is because it can be
> understood either from the perspective of a theory (with more or less
> watertight definitions) or from the perspective of colloquial usage (with
> musical and sexual techniques also qualifying for patentability).

   Word meaning depoends largely on context and community.  I remember
my early participation to linguistic conferences.  I made a statement
that some groups were less theoretical than others, by which I meant
that they made little use of mathematical formulation.  People did not
understand what I meant: for them "theoretical" refers to linguistic
theory, not to mathematisation as is usually the case for a computer
scientist or a physicist.
  Now, it is only a question of agreeing in advance as to the meaning
of such words.

> There are many other words that are regularly being exploited by
> patent ideologists for creating confusion.  Such as

>       intellectual property

   which is highly biased politically (see Orwell's Newspeak).  A
ressource does not have to be a property.  The word should be
"intellectual resource"

>       non-obvious

   always was absurd, since when 2 people apply for the same patent
whithin a few days, it is still considered non-obvious.


Bernard Lang
   as such

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