[Patents] patent pools enforcing per-copy-licensing mode of software development

[Gregory Aharonian srctran@world.std.com]

Once again, Bernard distorts reality:

>Information and knowledge are naturally public goods, according to the
>definitions of economists.

Wrong - information and knowledge are not naturally public goods, but
rather an axiom assumed or believed by some economists.

>It is the case that economists do not think that software patents help,
>as the IPI study published by the Commission shows quite clearly in
>Section 3.

Wrong - SOME economists do not think that software patents help.  Some
economists DO think software patents help (in the sense that they think
venture capital helps software development, and patents are one tool 
that venture capitalists make use of to protect their investments).
Given the subtleties of measuring the impact of patents, most economists
say little specifically about the impact of patents, but rather create
simplistic economic models to explore what the impact of patents MIGHT
be.

Your arguments are not going to be won using economics.  Not only is it
hard to measure the economic impact of patents in general, but even
harder to show how the impact of software patents is different from the
impact of patents in other fields of technology.  For example, the US
software industry is orders bigger than the European software industry,
partly because the US has issued more software patents that have been
issued in Europe.  The US has issued more software patents than Europe
because there is more innovative software development (and therefore a
source of demanded products for the marketplace) in the US than in 
Europe, software patents which partially facilitate the economic success
of the US software industry over the European software industry.  These
last two sentences are about as economically justified as any other
economic statement on software patent I have seen, or as unjustified.

Neither are you going to win your arguments by claiming software patents
restrict the flow of information, or suppress the progress of software
development.  The former has no support in the law, and the latter has
no support in most statistical measures of software development activities
in the US and Europe.   IEEE software conference proceedings are getting
so large and take up so much room on shelves that some libraries are
just subscribing to IEEE's online library service (where you can search
and then download PDF files of journal and conference articles of
interest).

Greg Aharonian