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

[Gregory Aharonian srctran@world.std.com]

Hartmut writes:
>... But you have not made it plausible that software patents in
>... reality led to the disclosure of valuable ideas which would
>... not have been disclosed otherwise.

Which is a criteria that you can ask of other fields of technology
as well.  There are so many hardware engineers on the planet today
who will invent no matter what the laws are, that one could easily
ask do we need retain patents for digital hardware (or analog 
circuits or golfball dimple patterns or antibiotics) to get disclosed
valuable ideas which will not otherwise be disclosed?  Most of the
original ideas in biotech come out of public, government funding by
the US National Institutes of Health, which has caused to be
disclosed and will cause to be disclosed many valuable ideas.

So whatever the validity of this criticism of yours of software
patents, once again, it applies to most other fields of technology
as well.  There is nothing special or holy about software - just
the next technology to cause problems for patent offices.

You can even use some of my software patent data (such as my
statistic that for $5000 each as a maximum, I can find prior art
to invalidate for than 60% of issued software patents, many if
not most on novelty grounds, the more cleaner kill than relying
on obviousness).  But I suspect that statistic holds true for
many other areas of technology as well - again, nothing special
about software.

The hypothetical losses of freedom and suffering caused by software
patents - sorry, happens in other fields of technology as well.

So any serious patent reform (and one that has any political chance
of being implemented) must focus on the patent system as a whole,
not just one dysfunctional part.  For example, all examiners need
more time, money and resources to do a better job of examining
patents.

Software patenting problems are nothing special.  The whole system
has to be fixed and improved (my goal), or destroyed (the goal of
some of the people on this list).

Greg Aharonian