[Patents] Re: Software Patents

[phm@a2e.de (PILCH Hartmut)]

>   according to our friends, I guess that a compiler optomization technique,
> or a garbage collection technique (memory management with free allocation)
> would be patentable  (am I right ... ?)
>
>   Given the extremely high interdependance of the successive
> improvement (sequentiality), given that when applying for patents you
> keep things secret for about 18 months, I just do not see how the
> level of innovation that I have been following in conferences for 30
> years (that was my field) could have been sustained.
>    I am really surprised no one analyzed it ... all the data is there.
> Take the published papers and public reports.  Look at the
> dependencies, and the time elapsed.  Look at the necessary
> experimentation, with the techniques of others.  Many of the
> experiemental results came from freely distributing academic systems,
> which would not have been possible with patented components ...
>
>   We had immense technical progress that would have been considerably
> slowed down, and might be missing at this time to handle the new
> programming task imposed by ICT evolution, on wich current economy is
> based.
>
>   The pro-patent lobby has not been doing its homework ...

Nor the others.
This is a problem that is harder to analyse than most of the questions
people are asking, as it requires diving deep into case studies and
reading a lot of patents.  Most of the analyses so far have been working
with game theory, surveys or doctrines but without well studied examples.

Prof. Konno's book on the Karmarkar patent (introduced here earlier,
http://swpat.ffii.org/vreji/papri/konno95/) is one of the rare
exceptions.

These are all the more important as currently the patent lobby is pushing
the patent system into the administration of universities without asking
much about how this harmonises with the universitarian research system.

--
Hartmut Pilch                                      http://phm.ffii.org/
Schutz der Innovation vor der Patentinflation:   http://swpat.ffii.org/
80000 Stimmen gegen Logikpatente:            http://www.noepatents.org/