Odp: [Patents] Bessen & Maskin reply on software patent paper

[Jozef Halbersztadt halber@timsi.com.pl]

I am patent examiner.
I understand - of course - that the patent system we know needs a
fundamental overhaul.
But the change is impossible without wide-based backing.
Therefore I sympathize with yours:
> However, if
> you argue that software patents are wrong on principle, and then you lose,
> it will be difficult to build support and continue.

What make me wonder is your:
> It is true that the Samuelson-Kapor proposal carried no weight.....
Especially after reading your remarks about alternative sources of possible
improvement.
Why don't you think that ideas of Manifesto 1994 are good medicine for our
ills?

Why we cannot correct slightly copyright and general patent law to create
between both a gap which should be covered by sui generis type of protection
for computer software? In this gap would fail many algorithms which are
responsible for the behavior of a computer program and which represent
incremental improvements. Such algorithms would usually not be patentable
nor are protected by copyright.

What Samuelson/Davis/Kapor/Reichman proposed is a system which provides for
limited period of protection against cloning. They say that the period has
to be long enough to give efficient incentives in the development of
innovative software and short enough to prevent blocking of the competitors
from entering the field. Supporters of Open Source would claim that the
right period is zero. But revised Manifesto can embrace them offering for
the code disclose an additional privilege.

The original Manifesto proposes a registration system by which the programs
during their anty-cloning protection period maybe registered and by which
the programs are protected for the additional period of the time during
which they are available for everyone for taking a license on standard terms
and conditions against payment of a compensation. Apart from the
registration, it is also similar to the operation of collecting agencies in
the field of copyright as installed in number of countries in particular for
works of music. In my opinion Open Source licenses can be integrated with
the proposed system.

We cannot have at once the worldwide (or trilateral) derived from the
Manifesto system of law concerning computer programs. But campaign for?

Jozef Halbersztadt