[Patents] more inflammatory speeches from Greg

[phm@a2e.de (PILCH Hartmut)]

> Copyright is not a natural right.  It's not a property right.

The German Constitutional Court (BVerfG) has extended the notion of
"property rights" granted by art 14 of the Basic Law (GG, constitution) to
include all kinds of immaterial titles, including copyright and patents.

This enlarged property concept is awkward and outrageous at first sight,
but in fact some advantages, because it allows a view on how property is
acquired and limited.  Patents, like other property titles, according to
this, need to be granted according to the principle of "social
responsibility of property", and since copyright has been found to be the
adequate legal rule for acquiring software copyright, nobody has the right
to introduce software patents (which void copyright property and thus
violate art 14 GG) without a change of law which takes the social
responsibility and limitations of property etc into account and thus bring
considerations to bear that eventually destroy the playground of semi law
experts such as patent lawyers (or patent busters), who until now were
acting in a legal (or "science and logic") world of their own.

> It covers expression, not the elements of expression.

I think this view is too limited.  It covers everything that
individualises a work and makes it attributable to a creator, be it
expression or not.  In the sense that copyright property extends only to
the individualised aspects of the work, it fullfills the requirements of
what people would call natural rights.  If there are any such rights, the
author's right to his work (the individual aspects that distinguish it
from the works of others) is one of them.

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