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

[Gregory Aharonian <srctran@world.std.com>]

>Utility certificates and sui generis rights can only come onto the
>agenda when the patent lobby starts pushing for them.  But that is very
>far fetched.  They most likely never will.

For one reason.  For the most part, sui generis systems don't work.
They end up being hybrids of patent and copyright, and tend to inherit
many of the problems they were trying to avoid by being sui generis.
In a variety of industries in the United States, some sui generis
system have been proposed or actually implemented, and all failed
(the most silly being the Software Manifesto of the early 1990s that
was purely a hybrid of patents and copyrights).

So it is not a conspiracy (not that there won't be elements opposing
any change, like any other industry), but rather that there rarely
is a good sui generis proposal worth arguing about.

With regards to patent terms, I consider it hypocritical to talk about
shortening patent terms without talking about shortening copyright
rights.  It is hypocritical to say a software patent should last five
years, but then give over 100 years of copyright protection to the
software (which is either outrageous if software copyright protection
has any value, or because none of you on this list object to copyright's
long protection, mostly likely it is because you realize that such
protection is mostly meaningless so it doesn't matter how long it is).

Greg Aharonian