Re: [Patents] Business Week Commentary

[Hartmut Pilch <phm@a2e.de>]

> A ban also would fly in the face of history. For more than a century,
> notes Harvard Business School professor Josh Lerner, experts with
> different axes to grind have argued that existing patent code isn't
> suitable to emerging technologies, ranging from railroads and
> pharmaceuticals to genetically modified organisms. But time and again,
> the law has evolved to encompass the nuances of new technologies. Lerner
> believes it's far better to let the rules work themselves out than to
> make industry-specific or technology-specific exemptions, such as
> Europeans are proposing for software. Such exemptions, he says,
> invariably become the subject of fierce lobbying motivated by
> self-interest and profit motives, not by notions of justice or social
> benefit.

When did Lerner say these things?

Given how the writer is misrepresenting our side, I wouldn't wonder if he
made this one up.