Re: [Patents] Re: More On State Sovereignty and Senate Bill 2031, Leahy's "IP" ProtectionRestoration Act

[PILCH Hartmut <phm@a2e.de>]

> There is a strong case that the policy prior to Bayh-Dole was
> ineffective.  Inventions that do not get into the world don't help
> anybody. From a policy perspective this leads two principles into
> conflict: the principle of ownership and the principle of "greatest
> good for greatest number."

This is often said but it doesn't seem to make sense.  That is like saying
"without a monopoly nobody will offer any products".

I think this fallacy owes its birth to doubletalk:  indeed patents allow
universities to market their ideas.  Without patents there would -- in
many cases -- be no marketing by universities.  But that does not mean
that these ideas wouldn't find their way to the market and benefit the
public.  By deliberately confusing these two issues, a universitarian
patent movement with its own belief system has been created, and our
german research minister is a particularly ardent believer, almost no
speech without euphoric mention of patents as the saving recipe for all
problems, see

        http://swpat.ffii.org/news/index.en.html

-- 
Hartmut Pilch, FFII & Eurolinux Alliance              tel. +49-89-12789608
Protecting Innovation against Patent Inflation       http://swpat.ffii.org/
100,000 signatures against software patents      http://www.noepatents.org/