Re: Donald Knuth on Software Patents

[PILCH Hartmut <phm@a2e.de>]

> http://www.linux.it/GNU/nemici/brevetti.sthml

not quite:

  http://www.linux.it/GNU/nemici/brevetti.shtml

And indeed Knuth's text is not new.  The USPTO had a phoney consultation
in 1994, which demonstrated the unpopularity and inappropriateness of
software patents, and since then has tried to create the impression that
"the debate about subject-matter is over".

Even at the recent FTC hearings

        http://swpat.ffii.org/papers/ftc02/

this debate was not reopened.  Yet many respondents did express their
opinion that the patent system is performing very badly particularly in
the software area.

In your italian article at the beginning you say that the patent system
was designed to promote progress and any extension should be measured
against this purpose.  I think that this approach is no longer thourough
enough.  The patent system was perhaps *not* designed to promote progress.
Promoting progress is however the only rational that can justify it, and
when it does not achieve this aim, its must be either abolished or reduced
in scope until it does achieve the aim.  Whether or not swpat are part of
the "status quo" is an irrelevant debate.  Things are moving all the time,
and if the patent system fails to promote progress, then it must be
abolished or reformed, regardless of what the status quo is.

-- 
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/