Re: [Patents] European Reuters vs Washington Post, another age?

[Hartmut Pilch <phm@a2e.de>]

> And here is a gem from the letter:

Actually it's not from the letter, which is found at

        http://swpat.ffii.org/news/03/telcos1107/

but from some corporate spokesman at Ericsson

> ..."You could compare it with an old telephone exchange where all the parts
> were patent-protected. Today the exchange is digital and run by a computer
> programme, which under these rules could not be protected," Ericsson
> spokesman Peter Olofsson said.

which is of course incredibly unenlightened.  You can read in patent
manuals of the 70s and 80s doctrines from patent courts which say e.g.
that the fact that some previously patentable function is now reduced to a
question of data processing and therefore no longer patentable simply
means that the technical progress, which was to be promoted by the patent
system, has already been achieved and no longer needs promotion by a
monopoly.  Statements like these are quoted e.g. in Krasser's patent law
manual of 1986.

        http://swpat.ffii.org/papers/krasser86/

> I thought patents were supposed to protect INNOVATIONS, not old technologies
> for running telephone exchanges, even if those technologies have been ported
> to computers. This is reminiscent of the AT&T executive in the US who, in
> 1907, stated their strategy for building a monopoly by obtaining "a thousand
> and one little patents" necessary to run a telephone exchange. This was, in
> his words, to "protect the business," not to promote innovation.

The Ericsson guy might respond that of course he wants to "protect" only
"new software technologies".  The problem is that since the task has been
reduced to one of programming there is no longer anything in it for which
patent protection could be appropriate.  "The patent system is not a
receptacle for all ideas which are otherwise unprotected but a specialised
system for promoting technical invention", the latter being defined by
"use of forces of nature for finding the invention", as the

        Dispositionsprogramm decision of 1976
        http://swpat.ffii.org/papers/bgh-dispo76/

says very succintly.

Why does Ericsson like reducing problems to software?  Because software is
easy.  If they want to go on patenting instead, then they should also go
on inventing the hard way.

-- 
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/