Re: EPO paper on CEC/BSA proposal (fwd)

[PILCH Hartmut <phm@a2e.de>]

---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Sun, 21 Jul 2002 21:27:20 +0200 (CEST)
From: PILCH Hartmut <phm@a2e.de>
Reply-To: intprop-l@topica.com
To: Gregory Aharonian <srctran@world.std.com>
Cc: epo@mlist.austria.eu.net, intprop-l@topica.com
Subject: Re:  EPO paper on CEC/BSA proposal

> The EPO paper is quoted as follows:
> >Also, they suggest at the end to
> >     Make clear that mere computer implementation of a per se
> >     non-technical method such as a business method does not
> >     involve a "technical contribution"
> >
>
> Someone at EPO should clarify, but I think the writers of the proposal
> were making a joke when they wrote this sentence, since as the
> governing document for EPO policy on "technical", the EPO Board
> pension patent decision, states, there is no definition of "technical".
> So this latest statement is meaningless, unless it was a deliberate joke.

It is not meaningless, but a central term in there is insufficiently
defined.

> This continual lack of interest in trying to better define this key word
> in European patent policy is sad.

Indeed, but so is the continued use of the same old deceptive rhetoric
such as the following by the PatNews editor:

> Especially since there is a growing amount of European Commission
> funded research and development projects that view business methods as
> technical methods.  I can understand ignoring Americans such as
> myself, but ignoring your scientists and engineers?  Weird.

What is "growing"?
Which "young scientists and engineers" are talking about the concept of
"technical invention" in the patent context?

There are about as many uses of the word "technical" as contexts, i.e. an
infinite number.

When a word is used too differently in too many contexts, it may be time
to find a better word for the concept which we are talking about.

The EPC does not say "technical invention" but "invention in the sense of
the patent system".  Maybe replacing "technical" by "physical" or
"material" would avoid the confusion which Greg is fostering here, but
then this term also wouldn't be immune against other attempts at
confusion.

There are always people who talk about the immaterial by borrowing
metaphors from the material world.  Referring to calculation rules as
"technologies" and to school teacher's strikes as "industrial action" is a
way for these people to borrow prestige from elsewhere.  You can never
prevent that, except perhaps if you create an artificial language which
you can control.  But then who will speak that?

-- 
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/

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