Re: [Patents] Discussion tomorrow with Eero Bomanson (HELP)

[PILCH Hartmut <phm@a2e.de>]

Concerning patent economics in the telecom industry, you may want to
mention an EU Commission study which judges the impact of swpat on this
area rather negatively, summary and links are found at

        http://swpat.ffii.org/papers/cec-telecom02/

More importantly perhaps:  Bomanson's decision is about program claims,
and telecom companies do not typically sell programs at all.  So whether
Nokia needs swpat is entirely irrelevant to the debate.  If they want
their software innovations to be patented (something against which the EU
study warns), the new decision of the FiPO gives them nothing that is not
already achieved by a laxist practise of granting patents for fictitious
technical inventions claimed as programmed apparatusses or processes, as
the FiPO has probably been doing for quite a while already.  At least the
EPO started doing so around 1986 and introduced program claims in 1998.

The program claim question is mainly symbolic.  It must be an attempt by
the patent movement to use its strongholds in governments in order to
influence the current decisionmaking process with more established facts.

See also

        Finnland and Software Patents
        http://swpat.ffii.org/players/fi/

The EPO Guidelines of 1978, which are quoted in our Counter-Proposal,
also provide interesting insights on Art 52 and program claims.  There is
no way in which one can honestly claim that program claims are permissible
under Art 52.

More on Art 52 is collected at

        http://swpat.ffii.org/analysis/epc52/

Any contributions are welcome.

-- 
Hartmut Pilch, FFII & Eurolinux Alliance              tel. +49-89-12789608
Protecting Innovation against Patent Inflation       http://swpat.ffii.org/
140,000 signatures against software patents      http://www.noepatents.org/