Re: [Patents] "Further technical effect"

[Carsten Svaneborg <svanebor@mpip-mainz.mpg.de>]

On Saturday 17 May 2003 21:35, Gregory Aharonian wrote:
> There is no emprical evidence that software innovation is being
> reduced because of patents - no evidence when you actually
> measure things.

"An Empirical Look at Software Patents", J. Bessen R. M. Hunt 2003
http://www.researchoninnovation.org/swpat.pdf

Conclusion (abbreviated)
Lower standards for obtaining patents substantially reduced the cost
of patenting inventions that use software and appear to have encouraged
the strategic acquisition of large patent portfolios. [..] Our analysis firmly
rejects the one-size-fits-all hypothesis that software patents are treated
just like other patents. [..] Most significant, we find that the increase in
software patenting is associated with a decrease in R&D intensity;
software patents substituted for R&D. Moreover, the magnitude of this
substitution is substantial about 10-15% of R&D. Our analysis rejects
simple arguments that more patents encourage more R&D or that lower
patent standards raise R&D incentives.

So the empirical study shows that patents from beling complimentary
to R&D had become a substitute for R&D. Which is not really surprising,
since you obtaining patent portfolios to crosslicense them and get
access to other patent portfolios.

> Software is just another technology dealing with the manipulation
> of a physical object - information (that is, if you read the physics
> literature for the last ten years, you will see the growing incorporation
> of information into the fundamental theories of physics as a physical
> quantity).

Could you post some references, please?

The concept of entropy is related to the additional information that
we need in order to specify the microstate of a system for a given
macrostate.

Microstate = positions and velocities of all molecules
Macrostate = mean energy, mean number of molecules, mean pressure etc.
e.g. coarse and measureable quantities.

So what is physical is actually the information that we do /not/ have
(entropy), which always grows (for closed systems) by virtue of the
2nd law of thermodynamics. For software it would be very bad if we
start by not knowing the input, and definitely not knowing the output,
so the analogy fails rather badly.

The physics litterature you're probably referring to the WH Zurek paper
on Maxwell deamons (ref later). But a Maxwell deamon is exactly
characterised as somebody knowing the information that we do not
(and can not) know (thus the Entropy of the Deamon =0). And claiming
information to be a real quantity for a Maxwell deamon, is not much
better than claiming that the information is real for God, and it would
be a bit difficult to base patentlaw/practice on the assumption that
you can that the Maxwell Deamon (or equivalently) God exists.

Algorithmic randomness and physical entropy, W. H. Zurek
Phys. Rev. A 40, 4731-4751 (1989)
http://prola.aps.org/pdf/PRA/v40/i8/p4731_1
(may require subscription to APS)


> Software then is a controlled way of using the forces of
> nature to manipulate and transform a physical quantity - information.

Software is a recepie for transforming information. Hardware
uses forces of nature to transform physical representations of
information, like the brain uses forces of nature to transform
mental representations of information. You should not confuse
the medium (physics) with the content (information).

> In that sense, the Nordic patent committee report of 1963 was just
> anticipating the understanding of information as being physical when
> they refer to the energy aspects of computer operations (since all
> information exchanges expend energies).

The brain requires energy for computation, so mental processes
also uses forces of nature to transform information, these are
just implented using neurons, neutrotransmitters and ATP molecules,
instead of semiconductor circuits.

Are you advocating a patentregime that also covers thoughts?


> Spend a few months (or years) and wander throught the physics literature
> and learn something serious about the forces and quantities of nature.
Am doing that on 10th year.

-- 
  Mvh. Carsten Svaneborg