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

[srctran@world.std.com (Gregory Aharonian)]

>Now we may regard the price/unit where we still get your investment
>back for selling services based upon .... [ developing hardware and
>software]

Irrelevant.  Patent laws have never concerned themselves with relative
returns on investment.

Patents are meant to encourage (for whatever incentive) new and
non-obvious technology.   PERIOD.

Software is a technology.   PERIOD.   All software applications achieve
a technical effect (if anyone in Europe bothered to define a
scientifically rigorous definition of "technical effect".)

Thus software is as patentable as any other technology, including
hardware.  The production costs are irrelevant, and have never been
a factor in the statutory considerations for patenting.  Additionally,
software is completely functional, and therefore (at least in the US)
should not be, and should never have been, protectable by copyright.

Software is a functional technology.  Just like hardware.  That's the
science.  If you want to eliminate software patents, you will have to
eliminate hardware patents.  The production costs are irrelevant.
Heck, in most cases, the R&D costs to develop the hardware or software
product are just as irrelevant.

In any logical formalism for basic patent theory, it would be easy to
prove logically that software is just as patentable as hardware.  You
are welcome to keep on posting non-logical reasons to the contrary.

Greg Aharonian