GregNews on "Stealing"

[PILCH Hartmut <phm@a2e.de>]

GregNews rants:

>     --  PTO FEE DIVERSIONS IS PURE STEALING
>
> Here's a test for liar detection in the patent world - if you hear them
> using the phrase "PTO fee diversion".  Anyone using it is lying on this
> issue.  It is not diversion - it is taxation without representation -
> it is theft - it is stealing.  It is Ten Commandment's stealing (and to
> call it diversion is Ten Commandment's lying), which should be endlessly
> reiterated to this Bible-thumping Congress.  It is unethical to charge
> someone a fee for government services at one price, if the cost of
> providing those services is a lower cost.

There are at least two rationales for patent fees

 1 pay for the costs of the governmental service
 2 reduce the number of patents and the legal insecurity induced by having
   a great number of them around, compensate the public for this
   insecurity.

Argument 2 is at least as old as Werner Siemens and the German system of
"conservative patenting", i.e. introduction of the German patent law bill
in 1873.  States can use patent fees as a lever of economic policy just as
legitimately as they can use tax rates or central bank interest rates.

It is not the first time I object against the "fee diversion = stealing"
argument, and Greg knows my argument.  Either he just fails to understand
or he is using PatNews at the service of some vested interest group or
both.  It is the same doubt which I have about his statements on software
patents and copyright.

A propos stealing,

  Moses, the Ten Exclusions from Patentability and "Stealing with a
  Further Ethical Effect"
  http://swpat.ffii.org/analysis/epc52/moses/

is also about theft, but takes it a little more easy.


-- 
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/