[Patents] Re: Software Patents

[phm@a2e.de (PILCH Hartmut)]

> > >   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.

Given the power and widespread acceptance of the patent juggernaut,
unfortunately in practical terms the burden of proof is on those who wish
to retain freedom.

> > 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 ?

The book has not been translated afaik.

> 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.

Of course, the Karmarkar algorithm is pure mathematics.
Krasser's patent law manual of 1986 notes that, while under current law it
is impossible to patent the rules of organisation and calculation used for
computer programs, it could be worth consideration whether such rules
might be specific and use-oriented enough to allow patentability in a
future law.  Krasser warns against such considerations and says that at
least when there is no clear use limitation such as in pure mathematics,
patentability will always be out of the question.

This problem is quite old it seems.  When an algorithm is very specific
and use-oriented, it is usually very trivial.  The quality of algorithms
lies, as Tamai's paper points out nicely, in their level of abstraction.
Algorithms are usually either very general or trivial.  The Karmarkar
algorithm is one of the very general type, and specifying a limited range
of applications, as was done in the EPO version, does not help much,
because clever attorneys will still be able to broadly encompass anything
that could be of interest.  Moreover, as we read in Paul de Laat's
treatise "patenting math -- what's the harm?" such constraints are
arbitrary und break with the principle of the patent system that the
scope of protection should be determined by the scope of what is
inventive.

> > 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 ...

Actually in Germany a law is being pushed through parliament that would
mandate every professor to report to the patent administration before he
publishes anything and let them then seize the patentable part of his
work.  The argument goes that "the USA, France, Switzerland and other
progressive countries have been successfully using this rule, only Germany
is backward ..."  It seems that again the burden of argumentation is on
those who question the juggernaut.

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