Re: [Patents] "Further technical effect"

[Hartmut Pilch <phm@a2e.de>]

> > > 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.

Any new program increases efficiency, as does any new algorithm.
This is evidently not related to cause-effect relationships in
controllable forces of nature at all.
No formula can prevent morons from drawing wrong conclusions.

> 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)

I'm afraid Lennarth Toernroth can only have written such gibberish if he
wants swpats.  Maybe he doesn't really want them but just wants to narrow
the gaps between himself and the EPO for some political reason.