[Patents] Greg's October European lecture trip

[phm@a2e.de (PILCH Hartmut)]

Greg is still excluding me and a few other critics from his news organ
"Patnews", but I nevertheless get it indirectly.

Greg's teachings about the unscientificness of software copyright and the
scientificness of software patents have not left interactive forums such
as ours very impressed, but the number of Patnews readers may be quite
large, and it seems that only this community so far knows about their
guru's immenent trip to Europe.  I hope that not only Bernard Lang will be
at Patinnova (where the Indprop Unit people speak about their software
directive plans) and that some of us will also give Greg a welcome at the
EPO.

Concerning the sophistry of the "technical effect" criterion, we do not
differ very much.  The problem is only that co-design cosmology is at
least as "unscientific" and pretentious as anything the EPO writes.

----- Original Message -----
From: <clients@bustpatents.com>
To: <srctran@bustpatents.com>
Sent: Wednesday, September 26, 2001 10:37 PM
Subject: PATNEWS: Greg's October European lecture trip


> !20010926  Greg's October European lecture trip
>
>     Good news for those of you in Europe who can't get enough of PATNEWS.
> Next month, I will be visiting Europe giving two lectures on IP law.  I
> will speaking in Dublin, Cardiff and Munich as follows (London if someone
> can arrange something).  I thank ahead of time all of these institutions
> for having the courtesy of inviting me to speak - must be a mostly
European
> custom.  I hope I don't end up being the Josephine Baker of the American
IP
> world (actually, I wouldn't mind).
>
>
>     -  Friday October 12th
>        Trinity College Business School, Dublin
>
>        2:00 PM - "Deconstructing software copyright - 30 years of bad
logic"
>        4:00 PM - "Why all business methods achieve a technical effect"
>
>     -  Tuesday October 16th
>        EC/EPO PATINNOVA 2001 Conference, Cardiff
>
>        2:00 PM - "Why all business methods achieve a technical effect"
>
>     -  Monday October 22nd
>        EPO, Munich
>
>        Afternoon - "Why all business methods achieve a technical effect"
>
>
> (note - I would like to give the copyright talk somewhere in London the
> Wednesday 17th afternoon/evening, if someone wants to host it).  Attached
> below is more information on the PATINNOVA conference (more information
> about it is also on the Internet at www.patinnova.org).
>
> This Friday and Monday I will be emailing out rough, rough drafts of
> copies of the papers I will be presenting.  They are big, 40-50K each.
> As a serious favor to me, I would appreciate it if some PATNEWS readers
> could read them closely and critique them next week, and send me the
> feedback.
>
> Greg Aharonian
> Internet Patent News Service
>
>                               ====================
>
> The main lecture I am giving is titled "Why all business methods achieve
> a technical effect", and it is a critical semantic analysis of last year's
> EPO Board of Appeals pension patent decision.  In that decision, the EPO
> Board basically ruled that "business methods don't achieve a technical
> effect" and therefore are not patentable.  I have one fundamental problem
> with this decision - nowhere does the Board define either "business
method"
> or "technical effect" - indeed it admits pretty much that no one in Europe
> has a clear definition of technical effect.  This is bad law - maybe good
> politics (and I recognize that EPO's political headaches are much worse
> than the PTO's) - but bad law.  To be fair, the US history isn't any more
> a testament to semantic integrity.
>
> The paper starts out by reviewing the decision and a variety of other
> European decisions and official statements, all that pretty much state
> that there is no definition of "technical effect", and worse, no formal
> requirement in the European Patent Convention for such a test.  I comment
> on the similar semantic confusion here in the US.
>
> The paper then analyzes "business methods" and "technical effect" from a
> semantic point of view, arguing that both can be well grounded using
> commonly used and dictionary definitions of "business" and "technical",
> such that "business methods" in all cases are either technical or
> industrial, and therefore patentable.
>
> I conclude with the argument that the patentability of hardware, software
> and business methods are too inseparable scientifically and logically,
> and that it is not worth abandoning science and logic for politics.
>
>                               ====================
>
> The second lecture I am giving is "Deconstructing software copyright -
> 30 years of bad logic", and it reflects a new initiative that I am
> starting - the global repeal of software copyright.  Global software
> copyright for the most part is based on exported US policies.  The
> problem is that there is no logical or scientific foundation for US
> software copyright.
>
> The paper I am writing is a critique of over 60 court decisions, Acts and
> law review articles on which US software copyright rests, a succession of
> of bad law, bad logic, bad mathematics, and/or bad physics (Benson, CONTU,
> Whelan and Altai being all of these).  Some of the court decisions are
> patent cases (since any decision hostile to software patenting supports
> software copyright, and many copyright decisions borrow logic from patent
> decisions).
>
> Many of the cases critiqued include:
>
> Herbert Rosenthal Jewelry v. Kalpakian, Gottschalk v. Benson, Copyright
> Act of 1976, Parker v. Flook, In re Freeman, In re Toma, CONTU, Data Cash
> Systems v. JS&A Groups, In re Phillips, 1980 Copyright Act, In re Walter,
> Diamond v. Diehr, Diamond v. Bradley, In re Abele, In re Pardo / Meyer,
> Apple Computer v. Franklin Computer, Apple Computer v. Formula Int'l,
> Whelan Associates v. Jaslow Dental Labs, Broderbund Software v. Unison
> World, Digital Communications v. Softklone Distributing, Pearl Systems
> v. Competition Electronics, Healthcare Affiliated Services v. Lippany,
> Johnson Controls v. Phoenix Control Systems, Manufacturers Technologies
> v. CAMS Inc., Lotus Dev. v. Paperback Software (D. Mass), European Union
> Directive of 14 May 1991 on software copyright, Computer Associates v.
> Altai, CMAX/Cleveland v UCR, NAFTA and TRIPS (software copyright clauses),
> Autoskill v. National Educational Support, MAI Systems Corporation v.
> Peak Computer, Gates Rubber v. Bando Chemical Industries, In re Trovato,
> In re Warmerdam, Harbor Software v. Applied Systems, Softel v. Dragon
> Medical & Scientific Communications, GPL - General Public License, UCITA
> - Uniform Computer Information Transactions Act, Bernstein v. US Dept.
> of State, Junger v. Daley, 18 Computer Scientists' Amici Curiae brief
> for DeCSS case.
>
> Anyone who has their favorite bad software copyright decisions not on this
> list, please email me.  Also I wouldn't mind a list of decisions after
> Altai based on Altai and therefore as bad as Altai.
>
>
>                               ====================
>
>
> From October 15 to 17, the European Commissioner is sponsoring its
biennial
> PATINNOVA conference in Cardiff, Wales.  More information can be found
> at www.patinnova.org.  It is a gathering of patent professionals,
> industrialists, academics, government experts, officials from the European
> Commission, the European parliament, etc.
>
> This year's conference has two main themes: patents in the digital era,
> and industrial property at the service of entrepreneurship.  It is being
> organized in conjuction with the European Patent Office and the UK Patent
> Office.
>
> Some of the more interesting talks will be:
>
>     The Community legal state of play in software patentability
>         Anthony Howard, European Commission
>
>     An IP system serving entrepreneurs
>         Ron Marchant, UP Patent Office
>
>     IPR and intangible assessment: patent valuation tools
>         Steffen Rebien, Danish Patent Office
>
>     Intellectual property rights and new technologies
>         Michel Vivant, Univ. of Montpellier
>
>     The Community Patent
>         Erik Nooteboom, European Commission
>
>     Overview of recent changes in UK patent law
>         Paul Dennehey, UK Patent Office
>
>     The revision of the European Patent Convention
>         European Patent Office Munich
>
>     University technology transfer: Europe v. USA
>         Manfred Schmiemann, European Commission
>
>     Patents in the digital era: the Patent practitioner's views
>         Robert Hart, Chartered Patent Agent
>
>     Patents in the digital era: the views of large industry
>         Christan Nguyen van Yen, IP VP Thales
>
> and of course, the highpoint of the conference:
>
>     Why all business methods achieve a technical effect
>         Greg Aharonian, Internet Patent News Service
>
> Myself, between the speakers and the attendees, I look forward to meeting
> many PATNEWS readers I have only known via email.  Of course, I assume the
> EC/EPO knows about Greg Aharonian antics in inviting me, i.e., shooting a
> bit the gift horse in the mouth.  That is, I will be making use of one of
> the worst business method patents in the history of the world, a patent
> which, ahem ......, is assigned to one of the keynote speakers.  See you
> all next month.

--
Hartmut Pilch                                         http://phm.ffii.org/
Protecting Innovation against Patent Inflation      http://swpat.ffii.org/
89000 votes against software patents            http://www.noepatents.org/