RE: [Patents] Linus: kernel development no longer legally possible

[Gregory Aharonian <srctran@world.std.com>]

>.... but I think that if I submitted an overbroad patent application
>.... for a general widget, they would laugh at me.  In software,
>.... however, they wouldn't.

You guess wrong.  Overly broad patent applications and overly broad
issued patents happen in all fields of technology, including software.
Overly broad software patents issue for the same reason that overly
broad mechanical, chemical, electrical, pharmaceutical, etc. patents
issue - because governments have yet to figure a way to financially
support patent offices so that examiners have enough time, money and
resources to make sure overly broad patents don't issue.

That software patents are overly broad has nothing to do with any
hypothetical/hallucinated difference between software technology and
other technologies.  For example, patent offices have as much problem
searching for, and assessing inventive step for, electronic circuits
as they do for software.  Nothing to do with the nature of the
technology, but rather the logistics of processing patent applicatins
and searching the prior art.

Software is just the latest technology patent offices have to struggle
with.  The real issue is why patent offices haven't learned from their
earlier struggles with other technologies, so they could anticipate
the next struggle and prepare ahead of time.  In fact, the opposite
happened here in the US.  In the 1980s, the US Patent Office noticed
that software patenting was becoming more and more popular, even
though the courts had yet to clearly confirm doing so, which they did
in the early 1990s.  The PTO could have used this time to prepare for
handling lots of software patents.  Instead, they assumed/hoped the
courts would greatly restrict the scope of software patents, and did
no preparing.  So when the courts, rightly so on science and engineering
grounds, allowed broad software patenting, the Patent Office was not
prepared, and has been struggling to catch up ever since.

It is sad to see this history being repeated in Europe.

Greg Aharonian