Polluted area, do not enter

[Jean-Michel POURE <jm@poure.com>]

Dear Brenno,

You are pointing out crucial issues. The system of patents is aging and 
coming 
to a point where it produces side-effects contrary to its primary goals.

Firstly, this decision shows that the EPO knowledge in patent theory is close 
to ZERO. In theory, the REGISTRATION price of patents should cover ALL costs 
of analysis and publishing.

If the price for accessing patent information is too high, this decision of 
the EPO could invalidate ANY patent on software, at least in France.

This makes me think of some friend of mine, who recently entered the Human 
resources department of a large company. After announcing that she was 
pregnant, she got fired, which is absolutely-not-allowed in France.

In most countries, chapter-one lesson-one of the Human Resources rules is: 
"do 
not fire a pregnant woman". But in some large companies, "specialists" are 
sometimes "complete fools". 

Secondly, this decision shows, to some extent, that patents on software are 
comparable to pollution. Like pollution, patents on software:
- are side-effects of a developed economy.
- stay a long time in the environment before they are eliminated.
- cost more than what they bring to the economy.
- are hidden to prevent analysis.
- prevent any further creation of riches (you cannot build on polluted soils).

The decision of the EPO to stop publishing full patent information freely is 
comparable to printing a "Polluted area, do not enter" sign. Or "We can turn 
garbage into gold, please proceed with payment.".

Countries registering patents on software are not well aware of the cost of 
"unregistering them". Patents are registered at the cost of investment by 
companies, which is a financial concept meaning anything. You can always 
pretend that the right-click patent needed 100.000 human days of work.

Therefore, even the budget of a year of a country would not suffice to 
eliminate patents on software. For governments, the solutions are either:

1) Clear the pollution (pay back companies to some extent). The minimum would 
be to pay back registration fees, but there is no real limit to possible 
compensations.

or

2) Accept pollution (until the system blows-up). The United-States are coming 
to the point where the system is blowing up. The EPO would like to hide these 
facts.

or

3) Bury the pollution into the soils and wait 20 year. And prevent any 
further 
pollution from now on. This is probably the choice of the European 
Parliament.

In the end, the best solution is to smile of Human Greed and Stupidity.

Best regards,
Jean-Michel Pouré

>  - The EPO is no longer publishing full patent information, using
>    DRM (password protected PDF files) and incomplete publication
>    to protect its proprietary database vending partners, thus
>    making the   FFII Software Patent Statistics
> http://swpat.ffii.org/patents/stats/ of last year incomplete.
>
> 1. Doest this mean ordinary people cannot get to the patent information
> any more?
> 2. If this is the case, what is the value of a patent? The logic behind
> it once was quite simple: A person has a patent to share his invention
> with the world and doesn't loose the rights to the invention. Now one
> gets rights, but doesn't share information in return.
> 3. How can anyone prevent that one violates 'secret' patents?
> 4. What is the overall value of a patent now? And where does it differ
> from copyright then?