[Patents] Re: European arguing for patenting pure math formulas

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

as Greg well knows, the mathematics of wavefunctions in quantum
mechanics is generally not tractable, hence does not lend itself to
mechanizable logical deduction.

  So I am wondering whether these statements are in good faith

Bernard

PS Greg ... how do you reproduce hardware at 0 cost, as one does for
software, which is equivalent according to some great thinkers of our
time.

and since you like the literature, I'll refer you to :

   Brand/product innovation and the optimal length of trademark/patent
protection , M.R. Veall, Economics Letters Vol. 40 (4) pp. 491-496,
01-December-1992:
  "the optimal length of trademark/patent protection is finite and
varies with the costs of innovation and production"

 In other words ... the analysis of patent usefulness use costs (what
a surprise) as a parameter ... and these vary a lot depending on the
field.


On Thu, May 10, 2001 at 04:25:35PM -0400, Gregory Aharonian wrote:
> Hartmut writes:
> >A patent on an invention in the realm of applied natural science is valid
> >until the day when someone has mathematically reduced it to prior
> >knowledge.
> 
> So I suppose you are against all chemical patents, since I can reduce all
> chemical structures to quantum mechanical wavefunctions, derive new
> chemical by combining such wavefunctions, and even test out the properties
> by doing quantum mechanical calculations.  And if you are against
> chemicals, you must also be against chemical compositions and gene
> sequences, because they are mostly linear superpositions of quantum
> mechanical wave functions.
> 
> Add your opposition of chemical patents to your opposition of electrical
> patents (since all of your arguments against software patents apply
> to hardware patents), and all that leaves is your good old, physical,
> touchable, huggable, mechanical devices.  By chance, are you Amish?
> 
> Greg Aharonian
> 
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