Re: [Patents] EPO and swpatents

[Ward Vandewege <ward@pong.be>]

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA1

On Tue, May 13, 2003 at 10:10:27AM +0200, Roland Orre wrote:
> What is the real motivation that EPO has illegally been providing
> software patents despite its rule about software as such not being
> patentable?

I think it is simply money. The EPO (like the USPTO and the Japanese patent
office) is fully self-funding. More patents == more money == more people ==
bigger organisation == more (political) influence.

> I have the impression that EPO is not so much based upon ideology and
> public service, instead it is more business oriented, easily controlled
> by greedy lawyers that see the treatment (i.e. money tweaking) of the
> customer as their main goal, not to have a sane patent/copyright system
> working.
> Does anyone share my opinion, and in that case, what to do about it?

I share it. I think an essential first step is the de-coupling of the funding 
of the patent offices from the amount of patents they grant. I would even
propose to reverse the relation, and subsidise them for every patent 
application
they *reject*.

Bye for now,
Ward.

- -- 
Pong.be         -(  "Just wait,  My crystal ball is infallible." -- Linus  )-
Virtual hosting -( Torvalds, discussing the future of smart I/O hardware.  )-
http://pong.be  -(                                                         )-
GnuPG public key: http://gpg.dtype.org
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
Version: GnuPG v1.2.1 (GNU/Linux)

iD8DBQE+wK/RqC3O5tzmh5wRAtE+AKCp0bY4m7r0f9SSa7wne2Y2VXDFtACfdLiA
k3Vvmywb2q6FOABDup795Tc=
=EkAS
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----