Re: Economic engineering as a patentable technology

[PILCH Hartmut <phm@a2e.de>]

> >As a conceptual antidote, what follows is a recent article in the New
> >York Times by a professor of economics and of information sciences at
> >the University of California at Berkeley, Hal Varian, who makes a nice
> >argument on economics as a science and economy engineering (which
> >includes business methods) as an applied science (and therefore a
> >technology).
>
> [cut]
>
> >So why shouldn't such a successful design be eligble for a patent?

Because then the patent system collides with other more important values
and goals of our polity.  As said many times before.

The patent system must either be limited to teachings about cause-effect
relations of controllable forces of nature, or it must not be.

Whether something can be referred to as "technology" or "engineering" in
some extended sense is quite irrelevant to the question.

> simply ask the article's author, Hal Varian, and you'll get a negative
> answer. Hal Varian, along with Carl Shapiro and other Berkeley
> economists, is well known for being against software and business
> methods patents.

> Please ask the economists before posting such messages.

You mean G.A. violated their copyright ?

The text was interesting nonetheless.

-- 
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/