Re: [Patents] newsscan: Software patent limits 'go too far'

[Rui Miguel Seabra <rms@1407.org>]

On Wed, 2003-10-22 at 18:25, Jean-Baptiste Soufron wrote:
> The problem today is more that computer scientists are clearly evicted
> from the legislative process. I totally agree with you on that again.
> Still, it does not mean they should be the only ones to prepare law.

Of course not. Neither should those that have nothing to do with
computer programming make laws over something they understand zero
about. So they are doing a law on something they understand a lot:
improving their profit through harmonically giving way to software
patents.

> That's my only argument : computer scientists can't just come and say
> what's next, they have to discuss about it and make concessions. 

But the jurists can, as they have been doing?

> But this is just THEORETICAL as computer scientists are COMPLETELY
> EVICTED from the current legal process. But jurists also are. As you can
> see, the patent directive is a complete legal mess absolutely
> meaningless and that can be twisted in many ways. Of course, it was
> never written by jurists but it was directly written by lobyying groups.

The directive proposal, as amended by the European Parliament, is much
much better. At least the major gaps closed and both 'industrial' and
'technical' have clear definitions setting to stone that software is not
patentable.

The lobby groups include in a great part patent lawyers, who fall in my
definition of jurists, who have a vested interest in that there be
software patents.

Rui

-- 
+ No matter how much you do, you never do enough -- unknown
+ Whatever you do will be insignificant,
| but it is very important that you do it -- Gandhi
+ So let's do it...?

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