From srctran@world.std.com  Tue Jul  3 20:56:06 2001
From: srctran@world.std.com (Gregory Aharonian)
Date: Tue, 3 Jul 2001 15:56:06 -0400 (EDT)
Subject: [Patents] Man Patents the Wheel
References: <200107031558.LAA19401@world.std.com>
Message-ID: <200107031956.PAA26667@world.std.com>

Jozef writes:
>..... an automatic royalty-bearing license available on standard terms
>.........   Reasonable fixed fees .......

Who decides what are "standard terms" and "fixed fees"
in their proposal?  The government, according to at least one version
of their manifesto (I am thinking of their article in the Communications
of the ACM).  Samuelson et al. proposed vague economic mechanisms in
their Manifesto, because they did not have a sound economic alternative
to software patenting, which is one of the reasons their Manifesto has
been ignored since it was published, especially those versions of their
manifesto that put the government in charge of determining "standard
terms" and "fixed fees"?

Of course, you could let the market place decide the economic compesnation
for a fixed period of time for software in their sui generic proposal, but
wait a minute, .... that's just the patent system.

Software engineering is the technology of the science of mathematics.  It
is all process and method acheiving a technical effect - in need of no
other IP protection than patents, at least theoretically.  Practically,
we have to get industry and governments to take software patent
examination seriously, to improve patent quality to get rid of the
crap that issues.  What's left would be legitimate patentable subject
matter, even satisfying the shifting ambiguities of European patent law
(and please, stop worshiping the German courts.  When, in one of their
decisions on 'technical effect' they pretty much admitted they have no
definition of the phrase, well, that is sloppy).

Greg Aharonian


