From phm@a2e.de  Fri Aug 17 09:09:52 2001
From: phm@a2e.de (PILCH Hartmut)
Date: Fri, 17 Aug 2001 10:09:52 +0200 (CEST)
Subject: [Patents] Re: On claim language. (Was: could you amend the statistics if they
In-Reply-To: <0.700002152.595257506-212058698-997991513@topica.com>
Message-ID: <Pine.LNX.4.33.0108170952060.2014-100000@mulix.oas.a2e.de>

Jan Halbersztadt wrote:

> Polish examiners are even stronger belivers in structural claims. As
> once I has been told by a head of the patent department IBM-Germany we
> are 20 years behind Germans. It is a paradox, but Poles, Czechs as
> well, kept some good German habits which in Germany withered away.
> Still, compromises are inevitable. I do not deny admissibility of
> functional claims. They allow to present the scope of protection in
> more general way compare to traditional structural claims. They are
> inevitable because modern technology is so complicated that sometimes
> only "compressed" description is realisable on paper. But everybody
> should be conscious where it is leading.

Yes, straight to the patenting of algorithms.
Often, the structure claim also is only a hidden (and incomplete) way to
do so.
Indeed "modern technology" is often no longer technology but
algorithmics (applied math).

The difference between an algorithm and an invention is that the algorithm
contains no physical components but only schematic (abstract) entities.
The algorithm's validity is independent of what kinds of possible physical
entities these schematic entities are assigned to in the stage of
practical application.

Saying that "patents on ... (= algorithms) are inevitable", is rather
inexact.

They may be inevitable in an environment where your patent office
president, encouraged by all kinds of political signals, tells you that
patent inflation is the tide of the times and you should not resist it.

They may also be inevitable if you assume that "modern technology" is
characterised by the subsumption of mathematics under "technology", i.e.
the equating of man with machine and enslavement of the human mind by an
unenlightened control-freak ideology.  Which again may be the leading
ideology in some influential circles which gave the signals to your boss.

But all that has nothing to do with any real development of "modern
technology".  The separation between mind and matter, logics and physics
etc has always been pervasive in human problem solutions.  As technology
(= mastery of matter) progresses, the realm of what can be done by pure
logics continuously expands.  That can be taken to mean that the patent
system continuously completes its mission of supporting technical
progress.

--
Hartmut Pilch                                           http://phm.ffii.org/
Protecting Innovation against Patent Inflation	      http://swpat.ffii.org/
85000 signatures against software patents         http://www.noepatents.org/




