[Patents] Re: [Fwd: The dready threat of Hague Convention]

[phm@a2e.de (PILCH Hartmut)]

> One problem I noticed is that people in charge in government do not
> even know what is going on.  They believe it is a simple technical
> matter that they can leave to assistants, who often do not report nor
> accurately assess the importance of the issue (and it is clearly
> deliberate)

At first sight this looks like a discussion about whether computer
programs should be copyrightable or not.  A fight of some Linux
libertarians, citing some trendy economic studies, against the common
sense that complex functional creations should as far as reasonably
possible be controlled by their owners.

This misunderstanding is furthered by the fact that the EPC talks about
"programs for computers".  In the context of patents this means something
completely different than in the context of copyright: algorithms rather
than the individually created tissue.  (see the EPO guidelines of 1978
http://swpat.ffii.org/vreji/papri/epo-gl78/ as well as court decisions of
the 70s).  To the informatician it is clear that programs are
algorithms and vice versa, but the normal PC (l)user understands programs
as concrete entities on his disk or has a copyright-guided perspective.

This is why I have lately been insisting on not using terms like "software
patents" but instead referring to "logic patents".  This directs the
unexperienced mind right into the center of the problem and thereby also
indicates the importance of the issue.

I suspect even that organisations like "Academie de Technologies" and
"Gesellschaft fuer Informatik" were goaded into accepting pro swpat
reports not mainly because there is the widespread "slave-owner ideology"
and corporate interest which I was analysing earlier.  An even more
important reason is that we always fail to grasp one basic reality:  the
standard audience is a clueless audience, and this even applies to
organisations of so-called technologists or informaticians.  One could
probably find out that 2/3 of the AdT/GI members will understand the swpat
only as a "Linux Geeks, supported by trendy economists, trying to abolish
all authors' rights" and form a healthy conservative reaction to this
before we even get a chance to talk to them about what is going on.

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