Re: [Patents] "Further technical effect"

[Erik Josefsson <erikjosefsson@telia.com>]

On Sat, 17 May 2003 11:01:41 +0100
James Heald <j.heald@ucl.ac.uk> wrote:

> Xavier Drudis Ferran wrote:
> > A "software technique" can never provide 'new teaching about
> > cause-effect realtionships when using controllable forces of
> > nature', in the same way that a poem can never be a weapon to kill
> > someone.
> 
> Okay: here's how a judge that really *wanted* to grant a software
> patent might parse it:  the computer is a system which is an
> application of"controllable forces of nature"; the program is a cause;
> the result of the program as mediated by the computer is the effect;
> and if that effect was more than just "the program completed", ie if
> instead it was"the program completed *more quickly*", this could be
> seen as an effect above and beyond the normal functioning of the
> computer.

Unfortunatelly I think this is true, even for judges that dont want
swpats. Swedish patent law expert (and judge) Lennarth Törnroth says in
NIR 1999 (Nordic Immaterial Rights 1999) when refering to the report by
the Nordic patent committees published in 1963 (which defines invention
in terms of forces of nature) that an invention [my free interpretation
here] "must be a solution to a problem/task with the help of the forces
of nature, that is, a casually determined use of the matter and energy
of nature... ...Undeniably, the construction and the energy supply of a
computer is an example of such use; with externally introduced methods
expressed in code, the internal operation of the computer can be changed
to increase efficiency of operational speed or security, or the computer
can be transformed to a special machine to solve an external
problem/task."
http://www.blipp.com/pawal/prv/20030314/Tornroth10.png
(scans are numbered 00 to 12)

That is why interdiciplinary conferences are needed. I would love to see
a discission between Lennath and Xavier.

//Erik