Re: [Patents] Greg's and McCarthy's "outsourcing" argument

[PILCH Hartmut <phm@a2e.de>]

> 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.

see

        http://swpat.ffii.org/papers/eubsa-swpat0202/amccarthy0302/

and the documents linked to.


    [CEC/BSA]                                                  [McCarthy]

>   (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 in fact tries to prop this "self-evidence" up:

                                                    Justification

      The economic importance of this Directive should not be underestimated. 
 Moreover, studies
      have shown a link between R&D spending, patent applications and 
productivity. Intellectual
      property protection creates and secures jobs in Europe and brings in 
revenue.

Of course this again is only an incoherent collection of tautologies and
arbitrary assertions which aim to mislead the reader.

Similar assertions are often made by patent pope Josef Straus, as quoted
in

        http://swpat.ffii.org/archive/quotes/

and are as susceptible of making economists laugh (I actually talked to an
economist who particularly laughed about these assertions) as are those of
MEP McCarthy.

The studies which McCarthy cites in support of a tautology (correlation
between number of patents and success of a company in an environment where
this success is decided by patents), are not named and of course do not
exist.

Like Straus, McCarthy also has some academic credentials.  I am also told
that McCarthy's level of reasoning is not necessarily below the
intellectual standards of draft-reports at the EuroParl.  Which is
probably why they have passed the gene-patent and anti-circumvention
directives.

-- 
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/