RE: [DMCA_Discuss] Re: [Patents] IT World Feature: Patently ridic ulous: What's Europe to do?

[PILCH Hartmut <phm@a2e.de>]

>                       I want to see the point about you folks saying "no
> swpat". Are you saying there could be no invention made in sw that has
> inventive step and novelty.

There is no technical invention to be made in software.
It is all about pure logics, mathematics, analysis, abstraction etc,
nothing to do with controllable forces of nature.
The economics of the mind is different from that of matter.

See on this the very good speech given by Jim Warren of Autodesk to a
USPTO hearing in 1994 and some other quotes in

        http://swpat.ffii.org/archive/quotes/#autodesk94

as well as, for more in-depth reading,

        The price to be paid for dismantling the concept of "technical
        invention"
        http://swpat.ffii.org/analysis/invention/

        Why software patents tend to be trivial
        http://swpat.ffii.org/analysis/trivial/

> How are you going to reward the inventor and how are you going to
> protect inventors rights?

As Jim Warren said, creative people can reap a lot of money in the
software area, among others by using copyright.  Probably more than when
they have to spend time collecting and defending patents, as Warren also
explains nicely, citing among others the example of Paul Heckel.

Frankly, "rewarding the inventor" is not our priority.  The priority is
benefitting the public, and certainly making creative people benefit can
be means of benefitting the public.

> I remember Stac vs. MS story for DOS 6.2. Without Stack's patent they
> would be history by now. But they were able to get $270*10^6 from Mr.
> Gates because of Stack's patent on their SW.

I tend to side with Microsoft on that issue.  Stac's patent is still doing
a lot of harm

        http://swpat.ffii.org/patents/effects/stac-hifn/

and I have never heard of Stac recently.  Do they still exist? If
Microsoft really ripped them off, they could have sued for copyright
infringement.

Using algorithms that others found first is usually anot ripoff according
to the ethics of most programmers and indeed the general ethics of our
civilisation, which was offended by the expansion of the patent system to
algorithms.

>                       I wish BT good luck with the efforts toward
> collecting their royalties for use of URL. With the money they get may be
> they can get the money to develop the "interGALACTICnet" ®  :-)

I wish them good luck too.  They should be treated according to the same
standards as all other patent holders.  If the law legal rules to unwanted
results, then the rules must be changed, not the results.

-- 
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/