From phm@a2e.de  Sat Dec  8 15:36:55 2001
From: phm@a2e.de (PILCH Hartmut)
Date: Sat, 8 Dec 2001 16:36:55 +0100 (CET)
Subject: [Patents] WIPO Patent Agenda consultation
In-Reply-To: <20011208124008.A11451@john-edwin-tobey.org>
Message-ID: <Pine.LNX.4.33.0112081618490.9164-100000@mulix.oas.a2e.de>

> >   http://patentagenda.wipo.int/
>
> My comments follow.

Did you submit them to WIPO yet?

> Metacomments?

I wouldn't really want WIPO to regulate that software may not be patented,
nor of course that it must be patentable.  I think the patent system is
inherently national, because it is tied to delicate constitutional
questions of setting limits to freedom.  The right to readjust these
limits any time must be left to those organisational units that have
properly functioning constitutions, i.e. not WIPO but nation states.  All
WIPO can do is to "harmonise" legislations in the strict sense of the
word:  set some meta rules that allow the differences to coexist with as
little friction as possible.  This has been done already, as far as
possible -- and some of the results, such as TRIPS, are already painfully
limiting the options of political sovereigns to conduct reforms of
constitutional-level significance.  Thus it must be said that at the
moment the best WIPO can do is to pull out of this whole matter or act
only as a forum of discussion rather than legislation.  Which is probably
not what they want to hear.

Basically this is also said in the documents you quote:

>     http://www.eurolinux.org/news/cpat01B/
>     http://swpat.ffii.org/vreji/papri/wipo-splt01/

-- 
Hartmut Pilch                                         http://phm.ffii.org/
Protecting Innovation against Patent Inflation	    http://swpat.ffii.org/
95000 signatures against software patents       http://www.noepatents.org/



