[Patents] monopoly/publicity contradiction?

[PILCH Hartmut phm@a2e.de]

> > I'm not sure that I understand your point here.  The whole purpose of
> > the patent system is to give the public access to every invention for
> > which a patent is granted.  However, giving the public access to the
> > knowledge does not include the right to commercially exploit another
> > person's intellectual property.
> 
> I think that I have to agree with Steve in this point. In my opinion
> this thread is missing the point about software patents. Although,
> as Pilch says, there is some contradiction between the lack of right
> to use the invention, and the right to publish about the invention,
> this is not a problem that cannot be solved. This is not the real
> and important issue about software patents.

You said everything that I meant.
I did not mean to say that the issue cannot be solved.

Maybe it can be solved almost as well as the issue of distinguishing
betwen technical inventions and non-technical innovations.

I am not one of those selective perfectionists who find some legal or
conceptional difficulty somewhere and claim that this renders other
people's social choices unfeasible.

Still, like you, I point out that there is a contradiction, which doesn't
exist in most of those hardware areas which supposedly are "just the same
as software".  If Greg, Steven and others acknowledge that software is
different, I can stop fussing about the monopoly/publicity contradiction:
Software can even be defined by this contradiction.  A software patent is
a patent whose monopoly can be weakened or even completely destroyed by
the publication of adequate patent descriptions.

-phm