Re: Another strawman for equal hardware and software patentability

[PILCH Hartmut <phm@a2e.de>]

> A pharmaceutical engineer told me these days about trouble with an EPO
> patent on using diamonds for a certain purpose in pharmacy.  The
> trouble here is that the physical causalities of this use of diamonds
> are known and the only reason for the grant of the patent was the
> logical inference that they can be used in pharmacy as well (as they
> are already in a lot of other industries).  That of course is a purely
> logical inference and not a technical invention.

The example seems also to show the difficulty of the concept of
"closest prior art" and of claim writing in the form of

        process of using a diamond [ with features of the the closest
        prior art ] , characterised by that ....

Which is the "closest prior art" ?
The previous methods used in pharmacy ?
Or the use of the proposed method in non-pharmacy ?

Depending on which is chosen, one can make the claim look like a technical
teaching or a logical idea.

Moreover, the nuisance of having the pharma business obstructed by purely
logical ideas such as the above drives up prices for pharmaceuticals and
undermines the credibility and public respect for the patent system.
People in the pharamceutical patent business should therefore support the
FFII/Eurolinux campaign.

-- 
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/