[Patents] Re: 80,000 signatures for software patent free Europe

[brenno@dewinter.com (Brenno J.S.A.A.F. de Winter)]

Greg,

First of all I take it that your just making a point here and allthough 
your remarks strike me as somewhat unfair I assume you just want to get 
a discussion started.

> Please do not waste the time and bandwidth of people on this list with
> such naive and ill-supported statements.  

Why naive and ill-support. I didn't want to resumarize the bandwith op 
people with the known content of existing websites. But by your request 
I will support this somewhat more.

> 
> Thank you once again for providing yet another reason why software is as
> patentable as any other technology - many of the software technical effects
> being patented (and in all cases, software achieves a technical effect,
> despite linguistic distortions to the contrary) are as non-novel as
> other technologies being patented. 

With the big difference here that already existing 'inventions' are 
getting a patent like for instance (to support my case) the possibility 
of multi tasking (something that got a patent two years ago yet has 
existed for decades). Or business methods like using a printer in a 
supermarket. Those examples show that patents have moved from innovating 
industries to legal tricks that basically are a way of obtaining 
monopolies without inventing or investing. In my country (the 
Netherlands) we found most innovation between the years 1869 - 1910 when 
our patent law was placed out of use. Many companies could then start 
using technologies and making their own inventions. 

> 
> Changing subject to silly petitions about patent policy, I suspect if one
> started a petition against AIDS patents, once would get 80,000,00
> signatures, not the statistically meaningless 80,000 signatures against 
> software
> patents.  But these petitions are not logically driven, but emotionally
> driven.  History is full of way too many horrors when a lot of people
> agreed tosomething that was not based on logic - Europe being the scene
> of most such horrors.

Yes in numbers your probably right. It is however not only about 
numbers. Numbers are - of course relevant - yet not absolute binding. 
And saying since we get only a 'low' number of signatures, that this is 
useless doesn't mean that this is a reason not to do it. I bet that a 
petition on human rights in North Korea would get only a few 
authographs. Yet that doesn't mean it is useless. This subject is 
difficult for many people to oversee. One cannot expect a truck driver 
to understand the consequences of patents. With AIDS that is different 
since it is more simple to understand. If they don't have the ability to 
buy medicine people will die. In general mankind doesn't like that. So 
if I have to sign such a petition it means that it is easier to do. Yet 
your example shows how patents are even killing people.

> In al cases, software achieves a technical effect if you properly define
> your terms and rules of reasoning about intellectual property.  Allof
> the complaints against software patents are true for many other areas of
> technology being patented.  To be against software patents, is to be against
> all forms of patenting, which seems to be the true cause here.  But for
> the rest of sticking to science and logic, software is unconditionally
> patentable (though it would help if the patent office improved the quality
> of issued software patents).

It wouldn't be such a big issue if many patents were not so trivial and 
real investments had been made: i.e. that would make it somekind of 
investment protection in stead of a cool way of getting a legal way of 
monopolizing the world. Also a big difference with many other markets is 
that a 20-year period in IT-terms is a very long period compared most 
other industries. That is all about reasonable return on investment.

> 


-- 
make dep install modules modules_install,


Brenno J.S.A.A.F. de Winter
De Winter Information Solutions.