[Patents] Openness and success

[xdrudis@tinet.org (Xavi Drudis Ferran)]

El Wed, Sep 26, 2001 at 10:08:27AM +0200, Jozef Halbersztadt deia:
> Till now nobody proved in details that secrecy (patents are form
> of secrecy) is wrong for economical and technical development. But

Well, I think patents are not secrecy (theoretically the whole idea
is to promote publication of inventions). They are worse than 
secrecy, more perverse. At least patents in knowledge are.
It is bad enogh not to know something, but it may be rightful if 
they who know don't want to tell you. But telling 
you something, and them prohibiting you to use it is like eating 
a big meal while a starving person looks at you in hunger.

I am not sure that I'd be able to understand an algorithm 
and do not use it. I don't always know what I'm using when I think
or work, and an algorithm is like any other idea. I don't get
to choose where my ideas com from, and I don't know how to forget 
something, so when I write an algorithm I may be using part 
of something I read somewhere in a different way, or apply to 
a differnet problem, or whatever, and not knowing that I'm doing 
that. 

Of course this does not matter in practice, because I don't 
know anyone who reads the patents anyway, so the theoretical 
publication of the invention does not have much of a practical 
effect. And patents are granted for so simple things that 
you don't need to have read it to use it, you're likely to 
reinvent it yourself. 

But I imagine that if there was an ideal system in which 
patents were granted only for things I could not reinvent on my 
own, and even if patent texts were useful enough to be worth 
reading as technical sources, even in that impossible scenario,
patents on knowledge would be very hard to comply with. My brain
just doesn't seem to work like that. I can imagine understanding
how an engine works and yet refraining to build such an engine, 
but I can't hardly imagine myself understanding an algorithm 
and not using it. Understanding it is using it.

So software patents are not a form of secrecy, they are worse, 
they're like a taboo.    

I haven't read the articles, but from the abstracts you post, 
I don't understand that stuff about reverse engineering. 
What does it have to do with patents?. A patent does not 
prevent you from reverse 
engineering a program and learn a patented idea, it simply 
should make it more easy for you to just read the patent text,
than to reverse engineer. If reverse engineering can lead to 
discovering something useful and patented, more easily than 
from the patent itself, then of course the patent should 
be invalid due to lack of disclosure. Am I wrong?. Never 
mind, I guess I should read the article.


-- 
Xavi Drudis Ferran
xdrudis@tinet.org