From seth.johnson@RealMeasures.dyndns.org  Sat Nov  3 18:21:13 2001
From: seth.johnson@RealMeasures.dyndns.org (Seth Johnson)
Date: Sat, 03 Nov 2001 13:21:13 -0500
Subject: [Patents] More on why business methods are technical (fwd)
References: <200111031712.MAA11119@world.std.com>
Message-ID: <3BE43599.F8B4D5A4@RealMeasures.dyndns.org>

Gregory Aharonian wrote:
> 
> I doubt anything Hartmut says will convince me to abandon my position,
> and I doubt anything I way will convince Hartmut to abandon his position.
> The question for the rest of Europe is which position makes most sense
> for the European economy.


And you're both trying to develop positions based on legal pragmatism.

Hartmut, however, continually exhibits a much more profound sense of
what's really at stake.

I personally don't think the physical/non-physical distinction is key,
at least in the sense that you present, wherein electrical is taken as
non-physical.  But such is the way law develops.

Your equivalencing the phrases "controllable physical forces" and
"patenting non-physical processes" is a ridiculously blinkered
rhetorical ploy, specifically designed to get around the reasons why
efforts are made to distinguish fields having to do with controllable
physical forces.

And the question is not what makes most sense for any *economy* at all,
at least in any typical sense of what "economy" implies.  The question
is what makes the most sense for humanity -- including, perhaps
especially, those for whom there is no personal commercial stake,
particularly ordinary citizens who just want to use their logic devices
to think.

Seth Johnson



