[Patents] Re: industrial application and swpat

[phm@a2e.de (PILCH Hartmut)]

---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Wed, 9 Jan 2002 12:16:11 +0100 (CET)
From: PILCH Hartmut <phm@a2e.de>
Reply-To: intprop-l@topica.com
To: intprop-l@topica.com
Subject: Re: [Patents] industrial application and swpat (fwd)

> Against all good judgment, I am unable to resist defending my mother
> tongue in this unending debate.  One reason it is unending lies in the
> metaphysical distinctions that certain debaters cherish but refuse to
> clarify

Which metaphysical distinctions are "lies" ?
Who refused to clarify ?

> and that English usage, in all its theoretical sloppiness, invites us
> to explore pragmatically.

Your position seems to confirm my prejudice of the builtin reluctance to
distinguish categories such as matter and mind (whose objectivised form
again is called information and treated as a separate 'world 3' by
Popperians).

Why should a builtin lack of distinction in a language be particularly
helpful in inviting people to explore anything ?

> Forget the language -- of the statutes, philosophers, etc. -- for a
> moment, assume inventive step for the sake of argument, and ask
> yourself: What inventive processes should get patent protection,
> against all subsequently developed and equivalent processes, to
> stimulate innovation?  Materiality, for example, the fact that you can
> put your hands on some processes but not others, really is irrelevant;

The last bold statement is contrary to traditional patent law doctrines
and it is unreasoned.  Also it is somewhat misstated:  it doesn't matter
whether the process in its actual execution is tangible, but whether the
invention is material, i.e. teaches us something about the physical
causality between means and effect.

There are reason why this criterion is very helpful.  It relates to the
economics of how inventions are made and how they are used and marketed,
to how many individuals participate how easily, how important various
freedoms are, what types of claims you are likely to get and much more.

> "industriality" -- please excuse this barbaric term -- is problematic.
> The gut issue rather seems to me: What kind of mathematics, alogorithms,
> etc., must remain in the public domain to avoid blocking innovation?

Maybe that is the gut issue, although I would widen the goal of 'to avoid
blocking innovation' a bit and replace it with something like 'to promote
the progress of science and the useful art significantly enough so as to
justify the restrictions on freedom and other social costs of the
monopoly'.

When you try to explore this question, how can a lack of sense for certain
"metaphysical lies", favored by your native language culture, be of any
help to you?  Those whose mind is pre-structured with a "metaphysical lie"
are probably better capable of appraising alternatives to this lie than
are those whose mind is not structured at all.  Moreover, the "lie" is so
astonishingly intuitive and productive that, pragmatically judging from
the way how it is working, it must be the truth or something
reasonably close to it.

-- 
Hartmut Pilch                                          http://phm.ffii.org/
Protecting Innovation against Patent Inflation       http://swpat.ffii.org/
100,000 signatures against software patents      http://www.noepatents.org/