From phm@a2e.de  Fri May  4 11:16:37 2001
From: phm@a2e.de (PILCH Hartmut)
Date: Fri, 4 May 2001 12:16:37 +0200 (CEST)
Subject: [Patents] Burce Perens: Software Patents vs. Free Software
In-Reply-To: <20010504114310.A29852@math.jussieu.fr>
Message-ID: <Pine.LNX.4.33.0105041211060.2729-100000@mulix.oas.a2e.de>

> > >From who's pockets?
> >
> > Patent applicants should pay more to get patents.  That's whose pockets.
>
> So only rich people (read, companies) deserve to get patents ?
>
> Great idea!

In fact this is not all that bad an idea.
It was one of the restrictions imposed on the patent system when it was
introduced in Germany in 1873.
A patent cost a horrendous sum, I think it was 15000 Reichsmark, but I may
be wrong.
This was advocated by Werner von Siemens, president of the Patent
Protection Assiciation (Patentschutzverein), the pressure group that
helped overcome the resistance of the economists in the 1860s and 70s.
They told the economists that this high price was to make sure that
patents were only granted in areas where largescale industrial property
was at stake, and they were a means of better regulating competition
between large enterprises, and by no means designed as a system for
personal "intellectual property", a term which even people like Siemens
considered nonsense and dangerous.

Of course this compromise between patent lobbyists and economists implied
that there can be no software patents, simply because software does not
necessarily imply an expensive industrial apparatus.

It is hardly worth noting in that context that we just stumbled across
another of the many inconsistencies in Greg's proposals.

-phm



