(fwd) Re: [Patents] Report on software patents.

[Bernard Lang Bernard.Lang@inria.fr]

this discussion is tiresome

the only issue is whether it is economically useful, and ethically
tenable.

  The rest is devoid of interest. The law is ther to says what is
publicly useful, not to please lawyers or IP specialists, or whomever
...

  soft and hard are not equivalent, until you show me how I replicate
a circuit board or an airplane with a disk drive.  The economics are
not the same and that is all.   And Turing never considered economics.


Bernard


On Tue, Dec 12, 2000 at 12:30:25PM -0500, Gregory Aharonian wrote:
> >What is peculiar about software is that it is information and a
> >process to transform information at the same time.
> 
> So what.  It is not physical.  But "physical" is not in the patent
> laws, only words like "technical" and "functional".  And software
> being a science is therefore technical (at least in US dictionaries)
> and definitely functional.   This obsession about the physical and
> informational is irrelevant.  Patent laws in both Europe and America
> talk about "technical" and "industrial", and every definition I have
> seen for these terms is easily satisfied by software.
> 
> And if you try to change the laws to explicitly mention the 
> "physical" as a limiting rule, then you run into the problem
> where software is increasingly a bigger part of mechanical,
> chemical and electrical systems (like FPGAs), casuing as many
> problems as you solve, if that.
> 
> Software is as much a science as hardware, because they are
> logically equivalent (the Turing argument I make).  Thus being
> a science, it is technical, and that is the governing principle
> of patents.
> 
> Fix the examination process - it is a much more effective
> solution than playing these word games.  All Hartmut's proposal,
> and others like it, will do is to increase the workload of
> patent lawyers at the expense of inventors.  Is that your goal?
> 
> Greg Aharonian
> 
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