[Patents] novelty and the anti-copycat affect

[phm@a2e.de (PILCH Hartmut)]

> When talking to small companies about what they might want swpats for, the
> usual answer is "to protect our new functionality from being imitated by a
> competitor who has seen our demo program at the exhibition".  So in fact
> even a demo program that didn't circulate but was shown at an exhibition
> is prior art.
>
> It needn't be noted that this reality is not quite in line with patent
> theory:  patents should disclose information to the public that can not be
> seen by just looking at a demo program.  Also it is clear that what these
> companies would like to "protect" against copycatting is usually not even
> novel, let alone an invention.  Most of this has been around before, but
> the competitors don't know that yet, and I as a software vendor don't want

please delete "don't"

> them to think for themselves or search old journals rather than go to my
> exhibition booth and copycat me.  So what some people really want is a way
> to enforce an ethical code of refraining from blatant copycatting, not a
> system for "protecting" inventions.  Whether the copycatted feature is an
> invention or not is beside the point.  It is copycat behaviour itself that
> people feel more or less angry about. Again here, extended copyright, if
> possible, would be more appropriate to those needs than the patent system.
> And again, the anti-copycat affect is not a sound basis for creating a
> legal system, because imitation, however shameless it may seem in some
> cases, is not always detrimental to the economy as a whole.  Using the
> patent system as the outlet for the anti-copycat affect is a double
> misconception.
>
> Well, these are by far not the only points where theory and practise are
> out of sync in the patent system.
>
> -phm
>
>
>
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