[Patents] Economic assessment

[Ram'on Garc'ia Fern'andez ramon@jl1.quim.ucm.es]

On Fri, Nov 24, 2000 at 05:19:19PM -0500, Gregory Aharonian wrote:
> Rather, it is the examiner's access, and time to consider, the prior art
> that is the problem.  The examiner need the actual (non-patent) prior art
> item in hand, on their desk, to issue a rejection.  Given much better
> access to the prior art, the EPO and PTO would be rejecting the vast
> majority of the software patents (and to a lesser degree hardware patents,
> mechanical patents, etc.), especially the crappy bad ones that we both
> like to ridicule.

Although I believe that Greg is well intentioned, he is simply wrong. I do
not think that Greg *really* understands how the patent system works.

The problem with the patent system is the law. The law says "non-obvious".
It does not say "difficult" or "complex". Any original idea is "non-obvious".
It is a philosophy. Case in point: in 1867 the USPTO granted a patent on 
"putting advertisement in the margin of the leaves of a registration book
of a hotel". Isn't it an original idea? Of course, so the patent office
*must* grant a patent.

The fact that there is prior art is pure luck.

Ramon