[Patents] Re: Software Patents

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

On Mon, Jul 16, 2001 at 08:36:13AM +0200, PILCH Hartmut wrote:

> > > 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.

that is an outright lie ... this rule is applied only in very specific
research contexts (typically when the work is supported through
contract with industry, or national defense).  It is by no means a
general rule, and is certainly not in the French law.

Actually, one university tried to make it a university-wide rule
(though articles had to be submitted to the lab boss, not to the IP
clowns).  They had to back off.  I have all the documents, notably the
agreement they wanted students to sign, and which was repealed
... again, only at the level of one university (Paris 6).

  Doing it as this law proposes, nation wide, is totally out of the
question and would raise an outcry.

   And I doubt very much ther is such a law in the USA (and
Switzerland, though I have no idea how things are done there, but we
could ask).  The most recent thing in that direction is the The
Bayh-Dole Act, dating back around 1980, which simply allows
universities to get patents on publicly funded research results, which
they could not do before.

Who is pushing that law ?

I suspect it is only intended as a propaganda device, and to keep us
busy.

Bernard


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