From phm@a2e.de  Sat Jul  7 18:03:59 2001
From: phm@a2e.de (PILCH Hartmut)
Date: Sat, 7 Jul 2001 19:03:59 +0200 (CEST)
Subject: [Patents] Re: doing business
In-Reply-To: <200107071553.LAA09306@world.std.com>
Message-ID: <Pine.LNX.4.33.0107071846120.3083-100000@mulix.oas.a2e.de>

> >... The whole paper, like most EPO reasoning these years, is written in
> >what we have called "Gregorian logics" or "power logics", similar to
> >soviet reasoning about civil rights: meaningless, without any relation
> >to reality, without any ....
>
> It is reprehensible bad manners for Hartmut to compare the reasoning of
> anyone on this list, or involved with patent matters, to "soviet
> reasoning".

Redirecting the subject of discussion toward netiquette is a very good
tactic for those who have nothing convincing to say about the subject
itself but are afraid that others might.

> If Hartmut cannot stop including ad hominem attacks in

What about stopping your ad hominem attacks and getting to the subject we
were talking about.

Comparing EPO reasoning on certain highly tabooised political subjects to
analagous soviet juridical reasoning is not necessarily an insult, let
alone an ad hominem attack.  It depends on whether you are just using the
widespread negative connotation of the word "soviet" or whether you have
actually argued a point and outlined a comparison that goes beyond the
fact that you don't like the two compared objects.

The soviet state has had quite a lot of achievements in many areas, and
soviet law cannot be simply treated as devil's work.  At the same time,
justice systems in even the most democratic states tend to have some black
spots, and it would be very naive to believe that the phenomena which are
best known and documented in the context of soviet law do not exist or are
not widespread in some subsystems of these democratic states.

Some common features:
- lack of democratic control
- pressures from strong vested interests
- institutional decay
- removal of important public freedoms
- unintelligible legal sophistry

What if the EPO jurisdiction on the limits of patentability is such a
black area?  Should it then not be allowed to make this comparison?

> his public comments, and won't apologize for doing so, I suggest we
> take a democratic vote with regards to his future participation on these
> lists.

It is interesting to note that you omitted patents@aful.org from the CC. I
am putting it back on.

patents@aful.org is a list on which this kind of attack has little chances
because people know both me and Greg from long discussions.  patent-l@ is
a list on which I am new, and epo@mlist.austria.eu.net is a list on which
a lot of anonymous people have repeatedly engaged in attempts at having me
proscribed, evidently because I am posting a lot of informations which
they would prefer not to be divulged.

--
Hartmut Pilch                                           http://phm.ffii.org/
Protecting Innovation against Patent Inflation	      http://swpat.ffii.org/
80000 signatures against software patents         http://www.noepatents.org/




