Quote from EE Times Issue 1245

[Peter Vandenabeele <peter.vandenabeele@mind.be>]

From EE Times Issue 1245, November 18, 2002 (www.eet.com).
Page 16 and 104.

At the end of the article:

"Patents ignite debate in cofigurable CPU's"

"...
Conflicts among granted patents are not all that unusual,
given the volume of patent applications and the Patent 
Office's apparent inability to asses prior claims and prior
art in any meaningfull way. Disputes are generally resolved 
either by direct negotiation between the parties holding 
the conflicting patents or via litigation. [end of article]"

As you may know, EE Times is the leading world-wide magazine
for Electronic Engineers. Please don't call _those_ people
clueless on Hardware and Software.

My analysis of this article supports exactly my two claims:

- The "official" system is totaly uncapable of following up
  the astronomic amount of information that is generated by
  millions of developers every year. And every year this 
  gets worse, as more and more people are developing SW.
  (This is not a personal blame to any examiner, it is just
  impossible for any human being or even computer system to 
  scan all that information for the relevant prior art in
  the limited time that is alotted per case).

- given that the actual detailed study and arbitration is
  executed later on in expensive litigation, this is where 
  the system becomes unfair and the larger, established 
  players (with more $'s) have a major advantage against 
  newer players (less $'s), let alone against a Free Software 
  defendant (0 $'s) that may be fully in his rights, but has 
  no large company with many $'s backing him.

So, the choice is simple:

- either, the system continues to exist, but is implemented
  in a fair and correct way (which I state is technically
  and economically impossible due to scalability problems)

- or the system is abolished since it cannot be made fair
  and only enforces the control over technical matter (HW)
  and software by those that have the deepest pockets, not
  those that are actually in their right given the legal
  condition that a patent shall only be granted if there
  is no prior art and it is not the normal work of a person
  skilled in the art (where I claim that close to 100% of
  SW development is just that: normal development by 
  skilled programmers using established techniques and
  bits from here and there to make a new program).

Peter