[Patents] consultation questions

[phm@a2e.de (PILCH Hartmut)]

> Additionally, as European governments seek out more investment monies
> as they try to wean European governments off of taxpayer financed
> investment dollars, the governments will encounter more and more
> support from potential investors (like venture capitalists) to keep
> patents, including for software.

Venture capital is not a good model for financing software innovation.
When a software company starts giving venture capitalists a say, that is
often the beginning of a downward spiral of that company.  Already in more
traditional companies there is the danger of alienation between
technicians and managment.  This danger is even greater with VC.  VC
usually brings people in who know very little about how the people in the
company and their business works.  Which is why they make plans based on
mechanistic accounting units such as patents.

It is perhaps not a clever economic policy to enforce more and
more of this type of cardhouse mechanism everywhere.  George Soros has
warned about this as well.

> I do not find it surprising that the French government is (pretending)
> to argue otherwise, i.e., support restricting the patenting of
> software.  France is a lousy place for SMEs, at least by all of the

I doubt Greg knows enough about France.

> reports I read where French startups are taking the Chunnel to the UK
> and setting up shop there, where the climate is more supportive of
> startups.  Nothing more hilarious than when the French government
> attacks software patents on behalf of SMEs.

> Indeed, I suspect as integration efforts continue in the EC, with
> governments being forced to privatize many of their R&D policies (and

Where is that happening?

Well, the patent movement is pushing for patent-driven university R&D in
some countries, but I don't see that being a result of EU integration
efforts.

> well they should - I resent having my tax dollars going to benefit
> a competitor),

A new item in the collection of Aharonian's beliefs.
May I summarize:

- Knowledge production should never be financed with public money
- Any knowledge that belongs to the public benefits a competitor
- All new knowledge should be assigned an owner, e.g. patented
- Copyright should not apply to software or anything functional

However advanced the US government may be in its economic thinking
compared to the French government, I don't believe that they are advanced
enough to send all their economists to hell and believe in this kind of
ideology.

> private sector investors and venture capitalists will want as strong
> as possible a protection for their invenstments in SMEs.  Copyright as
> is, is too weak (and any modifications like Hartmut suggests will end
> up looking like a patent anyway), whereas investors are well
> comfortable with patents.

Investors will adapt to whatever rules we set.
Capitalism can adapt to anything, even to a game in which every "new and
non-obvious" piece of knowledge is connected to a monopoly.
But also to other games.
Machlup showed very well that the patent game leads to a lot of economic
waste, and the VC cardhouse building and crashing is part of this waste.
The orientation of R&D toward short term market goals is another.
All that does not lead to sustainable development.

> Of course, if you are hostile to SMEs (like established companies and
> some European governments), than trying to weaken patent protection
> and ignoring the goal of improving patent quality is the position to
> take.  Being (or trying to be) an SME, I take, and have taken, the
> exact opposite position.  And hopefully someday I will come up with
> an idea viable enough to attract venture capital investment, and will
> damn well want to be able to patent it, even if it is software.

Good luck!

> So as European governments better understand the economics of attracting
> investments for their native SMEs, especially their software SMEs, I
> suspect they will be more supportive of an open, software patenting
> policy.

As European governments start reading the teachings of a certain
Californian co-design cosmology guru and proprietor of all rigorous
scientific definitions, they may well reach a stage of enlightenment at
which they will suddenly realise that software patenting stands for
"openness" and that the best way to solve Europe's problems is to go to
California and beg for a license to implement some of the innovative
policies which this guru owns, thanks to an explosion of creativity
financed by patent-hungry venture capitalists.

-phm