Re: [Patents] Russell's contempt for the motivation of scientists and engineers

[Roland Orre <orre@nada.kth.se>]

On Wed, 2003-05-07 at 15:22, Gregory Aharonian wrote:
> Roland Orre writes:
> >I can't see how an ordinary circuit diagram can be patentable.
> 
Greg answers:
> Do you know anything about the patent system? Have you ever looked at
> patents?  There are millions of patents around the world claiming
> and depicting circuit diagrams.  A specific circuit is usually 
> described and depicted in the specification to satisfy the best mode
> requirement, and a family of circuits is claimed in the claims (i.e.
> you don't claim the circuit by listing in the claims the actual components
> of the circuit, by rather describe the circuit hierarchically, kind of
> like how you would describe the circuit in a circuit description language
> such as Verilog).
> 
> With such a patent, you can prevent anyone from using a specific circuit,
> and any equivalents covered by the claims, or covered by the doctrine of
> equivalents.

Roland:
No, I don't know much about patents in general. Such a patent as you
describe above sounds almost as bad as software patents. These kind
of patents, which does nothing new, just combine standard logics,
can not be patented in my country anyway, as far I as understand.
It's to late to call the patent office here now, but I'll check with
them tomorrow, but from their rules, which I checked this types of
patents are not possible. To protect a circuit you can use copyright
or industrial design.

Now I understand why you speak so much about hardware and VLSI, as
patentable. For me it's not as they are not real inventions, just
engineering.

It is possible that this kind of patents are possible in many countries,
but is this good or bad? I consider it bad.

Greg, we all know that the US patent system is not working. There are
an amazing number of obvious patents there, like the one I mentioned
yesterday for instance, about "expert system on-line"
http://www.technologyreview.com/articles/shulman0300.asp
something anyone (like me) in the business predicted long time ago
because they are so obvious.

You know, this leads to an anarchy. You don't have any legal rights
anymore. There is a lottery if you will be sued or not, as you also
told me.

In the long term we need an harmonization, but at the moment the most
scary scenario is that the bad US patent system and their insane
patents will invade Europe. If this happens it is a catastrophy.

What needs to be done from your part, and I know that you are working
on this, is to improve the patent system at your end. From my point
of view you should get rid of a lot of possibilities to patent.
Get rid of all these immaterial patents for instance and let the
patent office people work with real inventions.

This is the only logical way to make the system work.
It will never work for software, despite you don't share my view,
but you should at least be aware that you need to do something,
and that soon.

        Best regards
        Roland