Re: [Patents] Patent on e-voter registration

[Gregory Aharonian <srctran@world.std.com>]

James asks about a recent EPO patent on e-voter registration:
>(i)  what was the technical problem ?

First state your particular definition of "technical" for anyone to
try and answer your question.  By why even bother, when you second
question is a much better approach:

>(ii) in an age where the management of public-key identification is an
>off-the-peg well-understood technology, what was the non-obvious
>inventive step in the solution ?

As I have argued for ten years, novelty and obviousness are a much easier
and more more objective way to kill the vast majority of crappy software
patents.  I would be interested in seeing the (non-patent) prior art
cited by the EPO for their examination of this patent - I suspect this
list of prior art will be inadequately short.

By relying on established novelty and obviousness/inventive-step analyses,
you can avoid the need to rely on the ill-defined/metaphysical use of
words such as "technical".

Greg Aharonian