[Patents] WHAT WE LOST DUE TO GREG

[phm@a2e.de (PILCH Hartmut)]

> Hartmut reiterates endlessly a question I have answered repeatedly:
> > Should everything under the sun that is novel and "non-obvious"
> > be patentable?
>
> Who knows?

So you still don't answer the question.

> But when it comes to software, the answer is yes,

I thought you said software was undistinguishable from hardware.
So, apart from not answering the question, you are contradicting yourself.

> under the
> current laws of both the United States and Europe.  Whatever complaints
> you have about software patents (I find the slavery complaint totally
> hilarious and totally insulting [to those who were slaves]), those
> complaints apply to all other areas of technology where there are
> patents.

I didn't make the slavery complaint.
However, any kind of domination, also that exerted through patents, must
be justified.

[... reiterations deleted ... ]

> Do software patents cause problems, cause people to change their
> business activities, restrict how people use the newly patented
> software?  Yes.  But is that any reason to eliminate software
> patents?  No, because the same problems occur in other areas of
> technology.  There is nothing special, nothing holy, nothing in
> software worth worshipping.

This domination must be justified for every field, and the balance tilts
very badly in disfavor of the patent system in the case of software.  I
am not saying that it is very good elsewhere.

> And if not, I will bet any amount of money that in a TRIPS challenge
> made by the US against any European laws discriminating against
> software patents, that the US position would prevail - for one
> simple reason - there doesn't not exist any language that one can
> clearly and unambiguously discriminate software as a technology from
> any other technology.

A TRIPS challenge has no chance if Europe wants to win. Europe is free to
define the terms "invention", "technology" and "industrial application"
according to its tradition.  And a very clear definition can be found at

        http://swpat.ffii.org/stidi/eurili/

> This then reduces this argument to one issue - should non-physical
> ideas (novel,nonobvious) such as software be patentable, should a
> patent system that originated in a mechanical world accomodate
> non-mechanical technologies as they arise (and eventually dominate)?

Should a system whose economic benefit to the realm of physical inventions
is already very questionable be further extended to the realm of logical
innovations, or should we rather cut the system back so as to make sure it
rewards only those inventions which contribute to our knowledge about
natural forces?

> At least for software, I say yes.  I prefer Turing over Pilch.

And for what do you say NO?

I didn't ask "at least for what?" but "for what?"  Where do you draw the
borderline between the patentable and the non-patentable?

What about

        twelve tone music
        cubism
        ecological taxation
        ecological logistics

All these are turing-complete and susceptible to be part of automated
systems in which all human interference is incidental or optional.  In
case you meant that turing-completeness is your standard.

I think I deserve a penny on each liter of gasoline sold in Germany,
because I thought up the concept of eco tax in 1981, when it was not yet
in the public debate.  I feel unjustly discriminated, like a piece of
non-patentable software.


-phm