Re: Back to the basics of patents... (Was: Re: [Patents] OT? : Patent for games...)

[PILCH Hartmut <phm@a2e.de>]

> In economic terms, the balance is good for patents for pharmaceuticals,
> provably

The balance seems far better there than in the software field.

Yet much of the pro-pharma-patent argumentation rellies on the problem
that long clinical tests and approval procedures are needed.  If this is
the problem, then patents are only indirect solutions, and a more direct
solution would be to grant temporary monopolies in reward for successfully
validating a new drug, exactly for the scope for which it is validated.

Otherwise even in the pharma sector you get thousands of patents each of
which is filed on the basis of very little inventive effort/costs and
which are used only for an arms race and may have quite bad effects.

AFAIK some countries already do give temporary exclusivity status to those
who performed a test series, independently of patents.

-- 
Hartmut Pilch, FFII & Eurolinux Alliance              tel. +49-89-12789608
Protecting Innovation against Patent Inflation       http://swpat.ffii.org/
135,000 signatures against software patents      http://www.noepatents.org/