[Patents] Re: Software Patents

[Bernard Lang <Bernard.Lang@inria.fr> (Bernard Lang)]

On Sun, Jul 15, 2001 at 09:27:43PM +0200, PILCH Hartmut wrote:
> >   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.

I was expecting that answer, but not from you.

The point is that patents are a restriction on freedom.  Restrictions
on freedom can be imposed only in the interest of society ... and the
burden of the proof is on those who wish to restrict freedom.

Now I will agree that from a practical stand, we could have done the
study for them.

> 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.

well ... that work should be done too

actually, some people keep arguing they need protection.  They should
at least be precise as to what kind, and what for ?

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

was it translated in a non-squiggly language ?

an interesting point is that those discoveries that are presented as
the most patentable are precisely thos that are mathematical
algorithms, hence precisely those to which the Curry-Howard
isomorphism applies best. But then, they are also quite willing to
patent mathematics.  INPI said as much.

> 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.

I am just amazed ...


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