Re: [fsl-discuss] Re: [Patents] The politics of software over-protection -- moving forward..

[Hartmut Pilch <phm@a2e.de>]

> >Software can be written so that a single program can be used for
> >many different purposes.
>
> Electronic circuits can be written (in Verilog) so that a single
> circuit can be used for many different purposes.  That is to say,
> a single electronic circuit can be used to cover more applciations
> and industries than say a patent for lawn mower blades.

These are also software patents.

> By improving the quality of patent examination for both software
> and electronic circuits, the result will be the type of narrow
> application patents that the patent system should be issuing,
> covering just a new specific use.

A belief which you have failed to verify for 10 years and which makes no
sense in the first place.

Whether prior art is found to make a patent reasonably narrow depends on
luck and lots of money (going into your pockets).

Software patents exist because there is an interest in broad patents.
If it wasn't for this interest of some influential people, there wouldn't
be such a pressure to change Art 52 EPC and discard the
concept of "technical invention", which achieves the same thing as
you claim you want to achieve:  narrow software property rights.

-- 
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://noepatents.org/