[Patents] Burce Perens: Software Patents vs. Free Software

[dmarti@zgp.org (Don Marti)]

begin Gregory Aharonian quotation of Thu, May 03, 2001 at 12:34:23PM -0400:

> There is no longer any practical difference between the amount of
> effort, ingenuity and needed lifetime of hardware designs and software
> designs - the same tools are used, etc.

With MIDI workstations and hard disk recorders, there is no longer any
practical difference between writing software and composing music. And
some music takes longer and is harder to write than some software.
Therefore music should be patentable.

If an American football coach uses the same CAD programs to draw
diagrams of football plays that an engineer uses to draw patentable
hardware, and since of course football requires ingenuity and effort,
football plays should be patentable.

(Both examples are silly but just as silly as patenting mathematical 
algorithms or business methods.)

I agree with Greg that reducing the number of invalid patents issued
will reduce the "software patent problem". But you also have to draw the
line of what is patentable, and what is not, somewhere.

-- 
Don Marti              "I've never sent or received a GIF in my life." 
dmarti@zgp.org            -- Bruce Schneier, Secrets and Lies, p. 246.
http://zgp.org/~dmarti/        ;(Free the Web: http://burnallgifs.org/)