[Patents] more inflammatory speeches from Greg

[phm@a2e.de (PILCH Hartmut)]

> >Sounds like an argumnet in _favor_ of successive innovation to me.
>
> Sure, why not.  Successive innovation is increasingly the rule of
> all fields of patentable technology (especially digital hardware),
> yet one more reason to make software as equally patentable as
> every other technology.

What you say now sounds like an argument for "increasingly pushing back
patents in all fields of technology".

> There is nothing holy about software - it is yet another technology of
> process and method that falls under the patent law, not the copyright
> laws which explicitly prohibit copyright for process and method.

Copyright explicitely exempts general ideas of all kinds, including
processes and methods for writing a novel etc.  Likewise, it extends to
individual creation of all kinds, including that of software.

Even if your point about copyright laws was true, it would only mean that
some copyright legal theories need revision. There is nothing holy about
laws and legal theory.  Yet, when looking closely, we find that legal
theory is not our problem.  It is rather the ignorance of legal theory of
some semi-lawyers such as patent lawyers, that is creating trouble for us.

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