Re: [Patents] The Economist on Software Patents in Europe

[xdrudis@tinet.org]

El Mon, Sep 08, 2003 at 07:05:52PM +0200, Francois Desarmenien deia:
> > Arlene McCarthy, the rapporteur of the European Parliament's committee for
> > legal affairs and the internal market, has now proposed an additional test
> > for patentability: an invention must teach a new way to use _controllable
> > forces of nature_ (really) and have an _industrial application_. This aims
> > to strengthen the exclusion of pure software and business methods.
> 
> Electrons running through CPU and memories ARE, by definition, a 
> controllable
> forces of nature (even if in fact they are more or less really controlled 
> :) !
> 
> And so, isn't an office suite (software) and industrial application
> (industrially put on CR-ROM and sold out) of a controllable force of nature 
> ?
>

An office suite is no teaching on controlling electrons. It would run 
just the same on an optical computer with electrons or whatever, it is 
a teaching on logics and rules of organization. The electrons are controlled 
by already known machinery. Requiring a teaching on controllable forces of 
nature 
is a good test which many people has proposed.

The problem is that the directive has many more holes than that one. So even 
if she 
covered one, others would remain. But covering one is something, anyway. 

Industrial application should be further defined.