From ramon@jl1.quim.ucm.es  Sat Apr 28 17:07:00 2001
From: ramon@jl1.quim.ucm.es (Ram'on Garc'ia Fern'andez)
Date: Sat, 28 Apr 2001 18:07:00 +0200
Subject: [Patents] Re: difficulty vs technicity
In-Reply-To: <Pine.LNX.4.33.0104281532130.24507-100000@mulix.oas.a2e.de>; from phm@a2e.de on Sat, Apr 28, 2001 at 03:45:50PM +0200
References: <20010428152752.A19348@jl1.quim.ucm.es> <Pine.LNX.4.33.0104281532130.24507-100000@mulix.oas.a2e.de>
Message-ID: <20010428180700.A19701@jl1.quim.ucm.es>

Answer to a private mail. At request of Pilch, moving this 
private discussion to this mailing list.

On Sat, Apr 28, 2001 at 03:45:50PM +0200, PILCH Hartmut wrote:
> > Eurolinux seems
> > to be against all software patents, but I think that software patents
> > are justified if there is a research effort behind so that the incentive
> > of the monopoly is necessary.
> 
> This is highly theoretical.
> 
> You can resolve the apparent contradiction by saying that insisting on
> empiricity (natural forces) is a pragmatic way to assure that most patents
> have a research effort behind them.  Pragmatic because (a) it works (b) it
> is anchored in legal tradition.
> 
> Of course behind this pragmatism there is more, e.g. the economics of
> immaterial goods, which are radically different from those of material
> goods, so that even for difficult software inventions patenting is
> unlikely to be beneficial to society.  Patents are questionable in
> general from the economics point of view, because there are many ways to
> promote innovations and reward inventors, and the monopoly way is based on
> tradeoffs that, according to many economists, hardly ever really work to
> the benefit of society.

When patents are used to protect complex algorithms, this protection is
equivalent to copyright protection. Like copyright protection, sooner
or later another programmer comes with an alternative free solution.
For example, this is happening with LZW (PNG) or MP3 (Vorbis).
Unfortunately, the fact that they are file formats can put high barriers
of entry to compenting solutions. For this reason, there should be 
exclusion of infringment when the most important economic value
of the invention is compatibility rather than functionality.

By the way, an interesting URL explaining why compatibility
is important:
http://joel.editthispage.com/stories/storyReader$117


I highly recommend you Joel Spolsky's web site.

Ramon


