Re: [Patents] EU Commission: Competitive and efficient European enterprises

[Guillaume Ponce <contact@guillaumeponce.org>]

> Many other fields of technology (electronics, communications,
> biotech, pharma, etc.) have learned to tapdance in these patent
> minefields.

A fact is that you have to be big enough to be able to produce these
technologies, not only because of the patent system costs.  To produce
electronics, biotech, pharma, etc you must have laboratories and
plants.

To produce software, you only need a computer and your brain,
something many private individuals can afford.  But they cannot afford
dealing with a patent system.  So, a patent system would considerably
reduce the number of potential software producers.


By the way, it seems according to you that the software industries
should learn to tapdance in a minefield because other industries had
too.  You seek no justification for the patent system in those
industries, as if the fact that they exists was proving that they are
good.  I think it is still controversial....

As an example, pharm patents are controversial in the way that they
prevent poor countries from producing medecines for AIDS at a price
that their people could afford.  It is not to say that pharm patents
are of no use.  It is to say that discusion about patents are not
closed in many fields, including fields where they had been
introduced.


-- Guillaume Ponce
http://www.guillaumeponce.org/