[Patents] what rules promote progress?

[phm@a2e.de (PILCH Hartmut)]

On Wed, 25 Jul 2001, Ronald J Riley showed some signs of returning to a
factual discussion.  This is quite respectable, given that even two young
scientists from the Max Planck Institute found that mobbing (bullying
against an outsider by a country-club like peer group) was the only
contribution they found themselves competent to make to this debate.
Thank you, Ron, for the attempt!

> The point I was making is that the debate has little value.  Reduced
> to their essence, Pilch's arguments are that many patents are on
> things which are not inventive.  That being the case it should be easy
> to engineer around them.  But then he admits that some of these
> patents are virtually impossible to engineer around, which is an
> admission that they are in fact on something significant.

Could it be that you are confusing "inventive" with "broad" ? I still fail
to see any relation between the two.  The problem with untechnical patents
is that their claims are functional and therefore either excessively broad
or useless.  See

        Dr. Swen Kiesewetter Koebinger:  On the Patent Examination of
        Programs for Computers
        http://swpat.ffii.org/vreji/papri/patpruef/

which is one of the best articles on this subject, written by a patent
examiner of the German Patent Office last november and somewhat
imperfectly translated by the FFII patent workgroup.

Also, my arguments really don't focus on inventiveness (non-obviousness).
You might be confusing them with those of Ramon Garcia Fernandez who has
good points to make on this subject.

How about this analogy to your argument:

"Reduced to their essence, the MPI scientists' arguments are that Hartmut
has made no valuable contribution to our debate.  That being the case it
should be easy to invalidate them.  But then they find that some of these
arguments virtually impossible to invalidate and that the only possible
tactic is mobbing.  Which is an admission that they are in fact something
significant."

That version makes more sense to me.

> In the end I came to the conclusion that the patents he most objects
> to are in fact significant inventions and he thinks that the inventors
> should give their creations away simply because he does not want to
> pay for the right to use them. Well I deal with idiots and crooks
> almost daily who are making the same arguments about my inventions,
> and frankly I have little patience for the arguments or the people who
> present them.

Inventors can keep their creations to themselves. Nobody forces them to
publish anything. When they do publish, they can get a temporary exclusion
rights under some regulations, which the state can institute for the
purpose of promoting the progress of science and the useful arts. This is
at least what the constitution of your country says, and it is how
economists or ordinary citizens would think about the matter.
Unfortunately the thinking of most patent professionals has taken a very
strange sectarian turn on these issues.  Which is why it has become
necessary to study the sociology of the "patent movement"

        http://swpat.ffii.org/stidi/lijda/

The bullying on this list gives me valuable new insights for this kind of
study.

But that is again a meta-subject, and I'd prefer to get back to the very
subject that the patent movement sectarians have lost out of sight:
which rules do really promote the progress of science and the useful arts?

Do you understand this question, Ron?

This is what I have been trying to talk about and what many people here
strangely fail to grasp, thereby supplying me with unwanted sociological
insights.

> Pilch most certainly has a right to his opinions, and I and other list
> members have a right to not listen to his arguments.

Of course.

But why did you recently, when I informed the patent-l@ftplaw.wuacc.edu of
the Dispositionsprogramm webpage, start warning them against me,
apparently with the effect of having me excluded from that list? Why not
just use a killfile for yourself, why prevent others from listening?

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