[Patents] Man Patents the Wheel

[phm@a2e.de (PILCH Hartmut)]

> Why? Because it shows the stupidity of any patent system. What'bout
> the prior art? *MILLENIAS* of prior-art, to say? Governments do
> really, really *love* to stamp, legislate, regulate, give their
> blessing to, and so on. They are NOT wise, they are NOT reasonable --
> they are just the braindead machineries of bureaucracy.

State machineries are neither scientific planning instruments (as
communists suggested) nor braindead (as libertarian wisdom goes).  We must
be critical of any such type of belief statement.  There are areas in
which state machineries are more efficient than markets and other areas
where markets are more efficient.  It seems that there are from time to
time ideological waves going through our society which believe in one and
revile the other.  In the 80s the pendulum has swung very far toward
uncritical market worship, and this is one of our problems in this patent
debate.  Anyone familiar with the software field will know that a lot of
achievements in this field come from state-sponsored or community-based
activities, and the market has continuously produced monopolies of rather
questionable efficiency, at least as far as contributions to the progress
of the art are concerned.

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