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

[Erik Josefsson <ehj@cleosan.com>]

Jean-Baptiste Soufron wrote:
> > Our activism should have come 15 years earlier, indeed.  You have a
> > point here, but ...
>
>
> How could have it been possible? Software patents were not such an
> important issue for all of us at that time! Now it is and now is the
> time to do something. 
>  
>
> > > and not put the blame on lawmakers whose job is not to guess
> > > what's right and wrong put to translate interests in words
> > > compatible with the existing legal system.
> >
> > ... it is still the job of courts to apply the written law and, if
> > they stretch it by interpretation, then better on the basis of right
> > and wrong than just on the basis of the interests that they are
> > seeing.
>
>
> Well, what's good for someone is always bad for someone else. What is
> good for us is bad for software patents lobbyists and vice versa... It's
> often a matter of interests and judges are not gods. They can't guess
> what will be really bad or good in a long term. They can just decide
> cases by cases and then, make law evolve step by step following the
> requests that come to court. 
>
>
> > And, as said, there are limits to stretching.  The limits were seen
> > quite clearly in the 70s and 80s.  See e.g. the manual of patent law
> > by Rudolf Krasser, which says where these limits were.  Or the text of
> > M. Vivant, all quoted on
> >
> >         http://swpat.ffii.org/analysis/epc52/
> >
> > It would be nice to have a translation of Krasser.
>
> Yes, but software patents were not so important at that time. They are
> now and thus, people fight to control them.

Part of that controle work is to rewrite history and keep silent about 
the core of patent theory.

The Danish patent lawyer Kim G. Hansen did not mention 
Dispositionsprogramm in his PhD thesis while other decisions in line 
with the "natural evolution of the patent system" were all delat with in 
depth.

I have even seen swedish papers with the summary "there is no definition 
 of the invention concept".

//Erik