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

[Bernard Lang <Bernard.Lang@inria.fr> (Bernard Lang)]

The real financial cost of patents is the litigation cost.
Unfortunately it is imposed on everyone, even those who do not seek
patents (reminds me of the patent lobby talking about the "freedom to
patent" ...).  And litigation costs do not act as a deterrent to
patenting, as would the very high fees suggested by W. Siemens, since
they are on everyone anyway.
   (... and that reminds me of the licencing policies, per processor,
of Microsoft : disincentive to use other products since microsoft
software has to be paid whether you use it or not).

  So lowering patent fees can only add to problems.

  Similarly, I am wondering whether the current european attempt to
reduce the number of languages for communautary patent applications is
such a good policy, since it amount to reducing a form of application
fee ?   Just wondering ?

   Maybe we should make it compulsory to apply in all european
languages simultaneously, as well as in Latin, Japanese, Chinese and
Russian:-)

Bernard

On Sun, May 06, 2001 at 08:18:57PM -0600, erik josefsson wrote:
> From 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 examine
> 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 the
> 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 organizations 
> 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 science
> to determine which projects are worth the cost. Some projects seem to have
> 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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