Greg's and McCarthy's "outsourcing" argument

[PILCH Hartmut <phm@a2e.de>]

GregNews again plays with the usual Gregorian fallacies about
copyright and software business in order to find a new rationale for
software patents.  Yet somehow I fail to see how the quoted article
can support the arguments at the beginning:

      -  SOFTWARE PATENTS VERSUS NON-US SOFTWARE JOB OUTSOURCING

      I believe the majority of issued software patents to be invalid,
  with little interest by anyone in the system to fix anything.  There
  has been no progress on software patent quality in 25 years (I will
  be releasing 2002 data sometime soon), with neither the PTO, Congress
  nor the patent bar really interested in addressing the issue.

Validity of software patents according to PTO novelty standards is one
thing, beneficiality to the economy another.

   But since I believe source code copyright to be both illogical
   and impotent to assert, to me the answer is to fix the software patent
   system.

What if "object code copyright" can be successfully asserted?
What if "illogicality" or "impotence to assert" are not all that
important for the viability of software business models?

  The question?  "How can American and European programmers deal with
  software outsourcing?", an issued well addressed in the following article.
  Open source?  Fantastic altruism, but idiotic business model, unless you
  are an academic with tenure.

How about just doing as they have always done: pay someone to write
source code, own the copyright on it, close the source if you like,
and then charge copyright license fees ?

  You actually have some new software that is innovative and useful?
  Patent it.

Having an enforcable patent is nice, but allowing such patents to be
granted may not be good public policy.

It might seem that I have here just wasted my time on a reasoning
whose incoherence we all well know.  For more on that see

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

What is interesting about this is that Greg is propagating McCarthy's 
rationale for granting software patents, as expressed in her amendment
proposal to recital 16.  


  (16) The competitive position of European                  (16) The 
competitive position of European
  industry in relation to its major trading                  industry in 
relation to its major trading
  partners would be improved if the current                  partners will be 
improved if the current
  differences in the legal protection of                     differences in 
the legal protection of
  computer-implemented inventions were                       
computer-implemented inventions are
  eliminated and the legal situation was                     eliminated and 
the legal situation is
  transparent.                                               transparent. 
With the present trend for
                                                             traditional 
manufacturing industry to
                                                             shift their 
operations to low-cost
                                                             economies 
outside the European Union,
                                                             the importance 
of intellectual property
                                                             protection and 
in particular patent
                                                             protection is 
self-evident.


McCarthy has to rely on the assumption that this claim is "self-evident"
(e.g. like Descarte's "I think therefore I am" ?) 

Greg also relies on this assumption, and probably many of his readers
(mostly patent professionals) will gladly be fooled into believing it,
and Greg will have said nothing.  

Perhaps Greg knows that it is economic nonsense: when intellectual
labor migrates to India or China, so will most of the associated
patents, providing that such are obtainable.  The richer countries,
who could otherwise have retained at least an interesting services
market, will then be tied up and dominated by those who do the
intellectual labor. 

    U.S. jobs jumping ship
    Cheap offshore labor is not just for manufacturing any more
    -- is your job heading overseas, too?

March 13, 2003: 3:50 PM EST
By Mark Gongloff, CNN/Money Staff Writer
http://money.cnn.com/2003/03/13/news/economy/jobs_offshore/index.htm