The design patent problem

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

The problem with software patents is, which I've now understood, 
after having discussed with the local patent office here, not that
it is software as such, but that it's design as such.

Therefore
patents should be innovations !

This leaves software out.
This leaves electronic designs out.
This leaves drugs out,
and of course algorithms, business models, patterns, protocols,
pure ideas etc etc...

A non obvious application is where you combine technologies in such
a new radical way which would be considered unexpected.

This means of course that software can be part of a patent, but, as
we have seen from the ridiculous US patents development, it obviously
needs to be pointed out, that software as such, can not be patentable,
electronic designs as such, can not be patentable, etc. Business
methods, protocols, text, etc should not be patentable.

Greg Aharonian, and others pro the big mess which is now the US
patent system (a mess which we hope to be avoided here in Europe)
have from my point of view misunderstood the whole idea about the
patent system. (OK, I know that he is fighting against obvious
patents, but he is doing this in a completely misleading way)

A specific patent should be judged by experts from areas involved,
and a patent should not be allowed to be a pure design, when it would
be just engineering. This leaves resources to judge the real
innovations.

A patent should be judged from that point of view that every patent
is harmful in some sense, because it implies a monopoly, but judged
so that from e.g. an ethical utilitarian viewpoint it's better
for the society to allow this patent, than not.  The length of this
monopoly time period should be adjustable.

Within the scientific, political and economical areas we have e.g.
the Nobel prize as an incentive and gratification when we have made
a great achievement. A patent should be considered something similar,
a gratification for the inventor because the society as a whole
gain something from this achievement. The US patent system is now
doing exactly the opposite, creating anarchy and lack of legal rights,
allowing e.g. standards for information exchange to be patented. This
doesn't lead the society forward.

The number of patents needs to be drastically reduced with several
orders of magnitudes to become meaningful, and to be judgeable.

It shouldn't be as in US where you can buy monopoly on any arbitrarily
idea. Further on, if the owner of the patent is not utilizing this for
manufacturing within a certain period, then it should become
public domain, to avoid "strategic" and speculative patent portfolios
which are now the case. 

OK, these were just a few of my cents.

        Roland