[Patents] "Harmonisation" and Newspeak

[phm@a2e.de (PILCH Hartmut)]

> > >According to our view, any harmonizations of the patent systems should
> > >not take the form of binding treaties but only of voluntary consent
> > >papers and memoranda of understanding between patent administrations.
> >
> > Which of course is not harmonization.
>
> Harmonization can take many forms, IMHO it is just about making two (or
> more) systems more equal the way that they function and making the systems
> interoperate.
>
> Does anyone have a good definition of harmonization?

You defined it quite well: making systems interoperate and removing
unnecessary dissonances without forcing the systems to become the same.
"Harmonisation" is opposed to something like "unification" or
"uniformisation".  Some of the earlier treaties worked in that sense.
They just established some abstract principles.

"Harmonisation" does not imply any specific means of achieving the goal.
It needn't be binding treaties or directives.

Meanwhile "harmonisation" seems to have degenerated into a euphemism for
the kind of thing WIPO is currently doing:  taking away rights from
democratic sovereigns and installing a rigid uniform system worldwide.
In closed societies where ideological movements wield power, words often
evolve into the direction of their opposite sense.  Examples are
"ministery of love", "ministery of truth", "ministery of people's
enlightenment and propaganda", "reeducation through labor", "class
struggle", "people's democracy", "intellectual property", "protecting",
"helping SMEs", "stimulating innovation", "stimulating competitivity",
"ensuring that patents are available for new technologies",
"computer-implementable inventions", "software- and computer-related
inventions", "removing legal insecurity", and, of course, "harmonisation".

Someone proposed to write a book "the open source and its enemies" on the
model of the later Sir Karl Popper ("The Open Society and Its Enemies").
I think it would be a very fruitful approach.

We can of course also play with PatentNewspeak

        Intellectual Expropriation
        computer-implementation-independent inventing tasks
        patents on computer-implementation-independent problems of logic

-phm