[Patents] British gov't Swpat brochure

[phm@a2e.de (PILCH Hartmut)]

A brochure

        Patents and the Software Industry

has been printed in the name of the British Department of Trade and
Industry.  It can probably be ordered through a 

        http://www.cssa.co.uk/
        http://www.richardpoynder.com/

Basically, the viewpoint is similar to that of

        United Kingdom Patent Office consultation on the question as
        to whether or not patents should be granted for computer
        software or ways of doing business
        http://www.patent.gov.uk/about/ippd/consultation/index.htm

i.e. clearly more objective and less apologetic than that of the EPO
and the European Commission's Indprop Unit or that of governmental
patent movement organs in France and Germany.

The paper starts out explaining dangers that software companies are
facing and also chances of getting a great monopoly.  2 columns are
devoted to 

        The case against software patents

which names some important counter arguments and, even if it doesn't
present the anti-swpat case in an optimal way, also doesn't try to
make it appear unfounded or based mainly on "open source movement
ideology", as some of the continental patent movement documents
regularly attempt to do.

The brochure does not explain what is "technical", nor does it present
the legal criticism of the current jurisdiction.  This has to some
degree to do with the fact that the UK did not have a clear definition
of "technical invention" in the first place and changed its
jurisdiction less dramatically than the EPO.  Thus, while the brochure
does not poke into the apparent contradictions, it also does not
engage in a lot of "patent doctrines with a further cabarettistic
effects" such as the ones we are continuously collecting under

        Moses, the Ten Patentability Exclusions and "Stealing with a
        Further Technical Effect"
        http://swpat.ffii.org/stidi/epc52/moses/

The brochure has an interesting list of references to further
information, including (literally quoted):

   Websites

        ... (mostly patent offices and government agencies but also:)

        http://www.eurolinux.org/
        A European site devoted to Open Source issues, and actively
        agitating against software patents in Europe

        http://swpat.ffii.org/indexen.html
        Software patent section of the Federation for a Free
        Informational Infrastructure

     Books

        - Inventing Software, Kenneth Nichols, Quorum, 1998
        - Patent Wars, Fred Warshofsky, John Wiley & Sons, 1994
        - Caught in a Web, Ed. Richard Poynder, Derwent Information, 2001
        - Rembrandts in the Attic, Kevin Rivette & David Kline, Harvard
          Business School Press, 1999
        - Hidden Value, Ed. Richard Poynder, Derwent Information, 1999
        - Owning the Future, Seth Shulman, Houghton Mifflin, 1999
        - Patenting Software Under the European Patent Convention,
          Keith Beresford, Sweet & Maxwell, 2000
        - Software Patents, Gregory Stobbs, Aspen Publishers 2000
        - Your Software and How to Protect it, European Commission, 2001
        - First Mover Monopoly, Olswang & Partners, 2000
        - The Economic Impact of Patentability of Computer Programs,        
          Report to the European Commission, Intellectual Property
          Institute, 2000
         
--
Hartmut Pilch                                      http://phm.ffii.org/
Schutz der Innovation vor der Patentinflation:   http://swpat.ffii.org/ ;
85000 Stimmen gegen Logikpatente:            http://www.noepatents.org/