[Patents] economic studies

[Gregory Aharonian srctran@world.std.com]

Bernard writes:
>and since it does impact the freedom of programmers, since it does
>a cost in reducing competiton and increasing monopolies, since it does
>have a cost in reducing fundamental freedom through the private
>control of biotech standards and communication formats and protocols,
>etc... but does not "promote Progress of Science and useful Arts"
>software patents are both unconstitutional in the USA, and generally
>harmful to society.
>Thanks to Greg for the proof.

And since biotech patents do impact the freedom of biotech researchers,
and do have a cost in reducing competition and increasing monopolies,
since they do have a cost in reducing fundamental freedom through the
private control of biotech standards and commericalization formats and
protocols, etc... but does not "promote Progress of Science and useful
Arts", biotech patents are both unconstitutional in the USA, and
generally harmful to society.  Thanks to Bernard for the proof.

Same logic for hardware inventions as well.  In any field you can claim
that there are enough researchers, especially academics with public
funding, to promote the progress of science and useful arts without the
need of patents.  Any field, including software.  Once again, there is
nothing special or holy about software, so your arguments against
software patents once again are arguments against the whole patent system.

Indeed, an increasing amount of profits in the hardware design world
are from the sales of semiconductor IP, i.e., VHDL/Verilog descriptions
of new hardware devices and systems, at last count, over $500,000,000
a year.  The developers make no products, just designs, mostly using
software tools.  And they use the IP laws, patents especially, to
protect the works.  But someone from another planet, watching two rooms
of people, hardware designers and software designers, wouldn't see
much behaviorally different - a lot of humans typing on keyboards and
looking at results on screen.  And increasingly the same with biotech
re bioinformatics.  The informational is increasingly playing a bigger
role in all fields of technology, so arguing against the informational
to be patented is increasingly arguing against all patenting.

So whatever the pluses and minuses of software patents, increasingly they
are no different than any other field of technology.  So anything done
to software patenting should be done to all fields of technology - 
there is nothing special to distinguish out software patents.  Patents
in general are a tradeoff, and tradeoffs imply costs and benefits.

So just confess.  You all are against all forms of patenting.

Greg Aharonian