Re: [Patents] myths & lies

[PILCH Hartmut <phm@a2e.de>]

> > > No, everything changed with the State Street decision in 1998. You don't
> > > even have the Freeman-Walter-Abele criterion anymore and since then the
> > > USPTO is flooded with patent applications.
> >
> > Are you sure about that?
> >
> > Swpat have been granted for quite a long time, and many very broad and
> > ridiculous ones (e.g. hyperlink) are not new.  Yet there has been an
> > explosion in the last few years, especially since the mid nineties.
>
> Indeed, the State Street decision is a landmark decision for business
> method patents, not software patents.

Business method patent := software patent which even granma understands

As Seth just explained, the importance of State Street was probably mostly
in its impact on public awareness.

Over here some swpat advocates such as Ralf Nack
(http://swpat.ffii.org/players/mpi/) praised State Street as pronouncing
the inevitable very clearly and courageously and criticised european
courts for dodging around and trying to impose an ill-defined unworkable
limit.

If the current directive proposal is passed, the same criticism will
apply:  we have here a directive that in fact legalises business method
patents but on paper again says that it isn't.  This, the refrain goes,
his harmful to european SMEs, who will not have the same degree of
awareness about the possibility and importance of patenting business
methods as their american counterparts do, thanks to State Street.

Currently "State Street" and "Business Method Patents" serve as a pretext
for an exorcism exercise in the European Debate.  They help the patent
lobby pretend that they still want some limit, while in reality all they
want is to stop granma from noticing what they are doing.

-- 
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/