[Patents] American Inventor Coalition / was Re: Software and Technical effect

[erikjosefsson@usa.net (erik josefsson)]

=46rom http://www.rjriley.com/about-rjriley/
i came to "Intellectual Property Creators" and found
http://www.heckel.org/Heckel/ACM%20Paper/acmpaper.htm
where it says:

"The problems that the patent community sees are these:
(a) the difficulty and expense of prior art searches;
(b) patents being issued with inadequate examination;
(c) imprecise claims making it difficult to know whether
infringement has occurred; and
(d) the length of time the examination process takes."

and the basic solution is suggested:
"PTO fees should be reduced, especially for smaller entities, and the PTO=

should receive a higher level of funding to improve its ability to examin=
e
patents so it can issue better quality, more timely, patents in software =
and
other technologies."

But the question is if the problems (a) to (d) could ever be
solved for the software industry when
(a) prior art is produced at a speed of >1000000 lines of code per day =

(b) potential examinors skilful in the art stay in the art
(c) imprecise claims is what makes patentlaywers tick (do you still use t=
he
Freeman-Walter-Abele test over there?)
(d) will allways be a problem if you want quality

And if they could, what would it cost?


Also an interesting suggestion is made:

"It seems that the PTO should compete with the NSF and other organization=
s for
federal funding on the basis of their cost effectiveness in encouraging
innovation."

but in the end the reasoning becomes to strong for my taste:

"It would be interesting to evaluate the results of federally funded scie=
nce
to determine which projects are worth the cost. Some projects seem to hav=
e
become like those welfare mothers, who generation after generation, are
entrapped in a governmental support system."

while envisioning the patent system to be THE knowlege generator, rather =
than
public funded universities.

Which makes a strange connection to the german law that Hartmut mentioned=
 that
would turn german universities into patent factories.
(http://liberte.aful.org/pipermail/patents/2001-May/001796.html)

kind regards =


//Erik

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