Gregnews: More on business methods being technical

[Hartmut Pilch <phm@a2e.de>]

Another rant from

        Gregnews
        http://swpat.ffii.org/players/aharonian/

!20031104  More on business methods being technical

What percentage of papers in all physics journals must discuss economics
and business for Europe to concede that economics/business methods are
scientific/technical enough to be patentable?  0.5%, 1%, 2%, 4% or more?
That physicists are increasingly reporting in physics journals on the use
of physics for specific economic and business problems must mean something
about such applications being "technical".  From the 18 October 2003 issue
of New Scientist, page 18:

    MARKET MODEL PREDICTS CRASHES

    Equations that simulate the activities of traders and investors
    are coming strikingly close to predicting stock market swings.
    Didier Sornette and Wei-Xing Zhou at the University of California
    Los Angeles studied the Standard & Poor's 500 stock index. Since
    August 2000, the index's value has been sliding downwards,
    oscillating as it goes.

    The researchers modelled this pattern, which they say stems from
    the herding behaviour of investors.  Their first attempts
    predicted when crashes would happen, but not how steep they
    would be.  How they have refined the model to predict the crashes'
    sharpness. (reported in Physica A, DOI: 10.1013/j.physa.2003.09.022).

    Sornette says his model would have predicted all five crashes since
    2000.  But the real test is predicting the next one: look out for
    it in spring 2004, he said.

Physica A - a hardcore physics journal published out of Europe.  Will the
market crash in spring 2004?  Maybe - maybe not.  But such economic science
and engineering, like other technical pursuits, is constantly improving.
Like other arts (such as alchemy), economics is evolving into a science.
Making its applications like business methods technical.  Patent systems
help arts evolve into sciences.  Stop betraying science by ill-defined
uses of "technical".  Leave basing intellectual property laws on false
science to the copyright people.

-- 
Hartmut Pilch, FFII & Eurolinux Alliance              tel. +49-89-18979927
Protecting Innovation against Patent Inflation       http://swpat.ffii.org/
290,000 votes 2000 firms against software patents    http://noepatents.org/