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

[Gregory Aharonian srctran@world.std.com]

>Why is why Samuelson, Kapor and Davis did not get much momentum behind
>their initiative.

There were many problems with their initiative.  For exameple, one part of
their proposal was for government agencies to determine some reasonable
amount of compensation for a commercial software product.  Given the
government's general lack of experience and familiarity with commercializing
products, this was a funny part of their proposal, more the bizarre
because Kapor signed his name to something that totally conflicted with
his 1-2-3 experiences.

Second, they misrepresented the history of Xerox and Apple/Jobs, in
order to create a problem they could solve with their sui generis
proposal.

Their proposal went nowhere because it was and still is a bad solution.

Greg Aharonian