Re: [Patents] US patent reform strategy inaugurated by myths & lies

[PILCH Hartmut <phm@a2e.de>]

> > There is nothing for you to "admit" for now, since you have not yet
> > exposed any hypothesis that anyone could have contested.
>
> As I've hinted in the previous msg things may be described as
> "Patents are annoying, but economic forces behind it are too
> powerful to be ignored or declined, so the only realistic
> approach is to live with it. The main focus should *not* oppose
> them totally, because most likely a failure will result, with
> little gain".

And what can you gain by not opposing them?

> I see more to gain with a compromise rahter a negation.

We are proposing lots of compromise solutions, but the lawyers who have so
far monopolised decision power are not interested in any compromise.
They feel comfortable on the bandwagon onto which they jumped 10 years
ago, and only pressure will get them off there.  Once they leave the
bandwagon, it will be a major shake-up for their community.

> and relative patenting issues. The question who has raised the Linus
> comment was "there are two options in using Linux in embedded
> systems: RTAI and RTLinux. RT Linux has a patent that threatens
> deployement of RT Linux in the field, while RTAI is basically a
> dead end". Linus answer say that the patent  in question does not
> threatens in his opinion the deployment of such product.

> Not precisely a business strategy, let me say.

Precisely what I meant by "business strategy": a question about how to
adapt to an adverse environment in the case of a particular project.

> > We are now talking about how the rules should be set.
> > And you are apparently advising us to accept whatever CEC/BSA/EPO
> > legislate for us.
>
> No: you want zero patenting,

I want to remove about 3% of the patents which the EPO grants.  About 97%
of them pass the technical invention test according to our research.
For the sake of 3% of them the EPO and its friends are risking to ruin
their system.  My modest wish is to help them keep their systme in a
workable shape.  Unfortunately EPO management prefers to listen to a few
greedy patent lawyers from companies such as yours.

> I say "we are forced to live with them, let's care that does not hurt
> too much". That is not accept everything, but accept something.

No, you are proposing that we should accept 100% of the EPO patents.

> Personally I think that a better checking rule for prior art and a
> shorter patent grant period (like 5 years) is something that can make
> a workable solution.

Shorter patent period is impossible.  It presupposes a distinction between
material and immaterial which you are not willing to make (you qualified
it as "ideological" and likened it to extremist parties above), and it
violates TRIPs.

We know the limits of prior art searching.  What it can do is reduce the
number of patents.  It does not address the quality issue in any
meaningful sense of the word.  All it does is improve legal security for
patent owners at the expense of the tax payer.  How many billion tax euro
do you want spent each year to achieve what marginal improvement in prior
art search?

See

        http://swpat.ffii.org/analysis/cost/

for an estimate.

-- 
Hartmut Pilch, FFII & Eurolinux Alliance              tel. +49-89-12789608
Protecting Innovation against Patent Inflation       http://swpat.ffii.org/
120,000 signatures against software patents      http://www.noepatents.org/