FTC Report on Patent System

[Seth Johnson <seth.johnson@RealMeasures.dyndns.org>]

(Forwarded from a European list.  I tried to convert to text, but GhostView
crashed, and I have to go to work right now.  :-)  -- Seth)

From: pelegrin@labri.fr
Date: woe okt 29, 2003  00:57:19 Europe/Brussels
To: Brian Kahin <kahin@umich.edu>, eurolinux@eurolinux.org, paigrain@acm.org
Cc: rishab@dxm.org, reinier.bakels@12move.nl, "P. Bernt Hugenholtz"
<hugenholtz@jur.uva.nl>, phm@a2e.de, philippe Aigrain
<philippe.aigrain@wanadoo.fr>, francois PELLEGRINI
<pelegrin@labri.u-bordeaux.fr>
Subject: Re: FTC report on patent system to be released tomorrow


Hello all,

Thanks to Brian Kahin, who pointed to me the fact that the FTC report on
patents & al was about to be released. Here it is :

http://www.ftc.gov/opa/2003/10/cpreport.htm

It is :

http://www.ftc.gov/os/2003/10/innovationrpt.pdf

Pages 13-14 are interesting, in the way that they think that software
patents were a big mistake, although they propose nothing to try to remove
them, save for easier and cheaper invalidation procedures, which have though
no legal certainty as they will be in charge of the USPTO itself...

Chapter V is most interesting, as the problems are stated, ... with no
workable answer provided.


Very sincerely,


                            f.p.