Re: [Patents] Re: Summary of legal arguments

[PILCH Hartmut <phm@a2e.de>]

Troll, troll, down the data stream, I should have said, but this
stuff is too cute:

> >Many of these start their argument with a definition debate about "what
> >are software patents", trying to score points on the difficulty of the
> >other side in defining something that is understood.

> There is no difficulty in defining "software".  Much like a circuit
> diagram or a VHDL listing, "software" is a shorthand notation for a
> specific type of digital machine (for example, all software can be
> translated into field programmable gate array patterns for their
> implementation).

We all know what software is, but your definition is still inadequate. In
Germany there is a definition by the DIN institute which could be used if
one was needed.  We don't need such a debate, but your attempt to come up
with a narrow definition that links software to machines is again
revealing.

> AS SUCH, software is just as patentable as a
> circuit diagram, or more specifically, the applied use of the software
> is as patentable as the applied use of the circuit diagram.

> And this is consistent with EPO decisions and with the law.

Evidently what you said above is in literal contradiction with the law.

> Further,
> the deliberately ill-defined vague wording of 52.2.C

1 Didn't you say that "programs for computers" (i.e. software) is "easy to
  define".  So what is ill defined?

2 If you claim somebody did something deliberately, then the burden of
  historical proof is on your side.

> was written at a time when people everywhere thought that some aspects
> of software could be protected by copyright.  In the decades since
> 52.2.C was written, the use of copyright for protecting software has
> been so limited by courts on both sides of the Atlantic that today
> copyright is effectively impotent for protecting software.

Copyright questions are a daily reality for programmers.

> Had 52.2.C been written afresh today, there would be no 52.2.C in it,
> especially in light of today's hardware-software codesign tools which
> blur any applied use distinction between hardware and software.

1 The soft-hard equivalence FUD was throuroughly answered in the 70s
  already, see Kolle.
2 If there is a blur between different kinds of violence, that is not
  a reason for a "uniform jail sentence for everybody".

Said many times already.

> Now people like Hartmut can could be into the bowels of history and
> dredge up old language from old decisions to attack today's legal
> decisions, but that is a feeble attempt in my mind, since others can
> dredge up their old language to support today's decisions.

You are the one who is basing his arguments on historical claims.
These can only be refuted by "dredging up" old documents, and that's what
I have done.

> The patentability of hardware and software are inseparable.  Which I
> think is the point of this forum - to attack all forms of patents,
> not just software.

reiteration doesn't help.

-- 
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/