[Patents] the burden factor in soft vs hard

[PILCH Hartmut phm@a2e.de]

> >Information has zero replication cost
> 
> Which, whatever its truth, has nothing to do with the issue of
> whether or not something is patentable, 

Nobody said it had.
My argument was about the burden factor:
divide the patent license cost by the reproduction cost, and you get a
division by zero, i.e. infinite burden.

> And as I have said before, the medium of exchange in more and more
> patentable industries is information - gene sequences, VHDL coding
> for hardware circuits, finite element meshes for mechanical designs.

The medium of exchange is usually information.
The merchandisable good, on whose price a patent license fee is added,
is however made of matter and thus has >0 reproduction costs, thus
giving you a division by something and a burden factor of usually
1/10 or less.
 
> Here too the replication cost is zero, especially in the Internet era.  
> So if you are making this replication cost argument against software
> patents, you are in fact making an argument against patents in most
> other fields of technology.  Which is what I think your real motives
> are.

Since it is evident (and even you don't dispute) that software patents
have in general no merit for the promotion of progress, the patent lobby's
only chance of winning the argument consists in shifting the focus toward
some ideological debate on "intellectual property, yes or no?".  When
people don't go along, you have to assign them opinions which are not
theirs, so you may have something to argue against.

-phm