From Luuk.van.Dijk@xs4all.nl  Tue Dec 19 10:16:09 2000
Date: Tue, 19 Dec 2000 11:16:09 +0100
From: Luuk van Dijk Luuk.van.Dijk@xs4all.nl
Subject: [Patents] regulation draft proposal: revision

Gregory Aharonian wrote:
> 
>         And being a science, semantically, makes it technical.
>         And therefore a priori patentable where technical or
>         technical effect or technicity or whatever is the
>         governing philosophical principle.
> 

Maybe we are at the heart of the difference of opinion between mr.
A. and the rest of the mailinglist here.

I think that in the -semantic- context of the Munich Treaty
mathematics, although a science, is considered "non technical".

This is also how I understand the explanations of mr. G\"unter
Grall on page 10 of the 'independent study' of the EC 
(http://europa.eu.int/comm/internal_market/en/intprop/indprop/softpaten.htm)
(although the study strangely twists the argument to conclude the opposite)

So apparently, when the treaty was drafted, 
	- software was considered to be more like mathematics than like engineering
	- it was considered okay to exclude the former from patentability

Therefore, if you are going to argue that this difference is nonsensical now,
you also have to explain what changed between then and now.

I do agree with mr. Ahoronian that the proponents try really hard not to
see the difference, if they listen to arguments at all, so we better 
explain this carefully.

Luuk van Dijk

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