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

[PILCH Hartmut <phm@a2e.de>]

> 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.

"Overly broads" here means "broader than justified in light of prior art".
This means that broadness is limited only on a random basis.  Moreover
somebody has to pay for all this prior art cure. If it is not to be paid
by taxes, then by higher patent fees.  Companies are already complaining
that the fees are too high.

In a real world, there a lot of constraints, costs and trade-offs. It has
all been calculated many times.  One calculation was done by us at

        http://swpat.ffii.org/analysis/cost/

Some of the scholars present at the recent meetings in Paris and Amsterdam

        http://swpat.ffii.org/conferences/2002/ifri06/
        http://swpat.ffii.org/conferences/2002/amsterdam08/

have also built models for this calculation.  At the recent

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

one scholar proposed that the examination system should be scrapped
altogether, because it won't work, even if you pump unjustifiable sums of
money into it.

Again, by applying the filter of

        technical invention
        http://swpat.ffii.org/analysis/invention/

the constraints on the examination system become much more favorable. This
has been one of the reasons why the more sane forces within the patent
offices have always been reluctant to expand the scope of the patent
system to software.  They needed a push from advisory councils composed of
industrial patent lawyers, such as the SACEPO (standing advisory committee
of the EPO).  Only the combination of SACEPO with a mostly clueless EPO
managment provided the necessary forces of greed and ignorance that
sufficed to tilt the balance and break the law in a whole series of cases,
of which a yet incomplete account can be found at

        http://swpat.ffii.org/players/epo/


-- 
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/