From srctran@world.std.com  Thu Jul 12 20:29:18 2001
From: srctran@world.std.com (Gregory Aharonian)
Date: Thu, 12 Jul 2001 15:29:18 -0400 (EDT)
Subject: [Patents] Patnews on Pierret
References: <200107101740.NAA26786@world.std.com>
Message-ID: <200107121929.PAA07510@world.std.com>

Daniel writes:
> Economic arguments for/against weak/strong protection of IP crucially
>depend on the nature of the industry.

I agree.  Which is why I keep on arguing that the patentability of
hardware and the patentability of software should be equivalent, both
for the logical legal reasons, and for the economic reasons that
increasingly the use and exploitation of IP in hardware and software
is the same, for example, in a world of hardware/software codesign
tools.  All of the complaints against software patents are said about
hardware patents (go ask the European chip companies about Rambus).
Hardware companies make hundreds of millions of dollars licensing their
hardware designs in software form, never once actually making everything.

So I agree with your economics concerns.  I just believe, and have 
plenty of data, that the economics of software and hardware IP are
close enough, that both (and they are not even both, they are the
same science and technology in two different embodiments) should be
equally patentable or non-patentable.

The only reason you don't hear similar complaints out of the hardware
world, is that they had these discussions decades ago.  The software
world is just goig through a similar set of discussions, just like
the European courts are dealing with software patent issues that the
US courts have already dealt with.  Classic time-shifting problems.

Greg Aharonian


