Re: [Patents] Software patents: the case against

[Erik Josefsson <ehj@cleosan.com>]

Hartmut Pilch wrote:

> If programs are to be "protected as literary works", that indeed should
> mean that the scope of "protection" is determined by copyright, and not by
> a cumulation of copyright with something else.  Copyright determines that
> ideas are excluded.  They can not therefore be included by means of
> patents.

When you stare at a word long enough, it's meaning dissolves. Maybe I 
have stared at the word "idea" too long, because I don't really 
understand what it means.

Literary works and inventions are different kinds of achievements, right?

A materialisation of a literary work is (e.g.) a book, right?

A materialisation of an invention is (e.g.) an industrial process, right?

The "protection" is a set of rules defining what other people or players 
can not do with a materialisation of an achievement, right?


I can't see where the word "idea" would make anything clearer or easier 
to understand here.

//Erik


 literary work is a book, right?

.







> I think the argument about "industrial application" is not quite tenable.
> Even if you reduce "industrial" to "commercial", as abusively done by EPO
> (it should imply that material goods are brought to the market), you still
> have a meaning of usefulness in there (functional vs esthetic, "causally
> overseeable result" from the technicity definition).  That is why
> comparing software with music may not be convincing to the reader if not
> done with care.  People intuitively feel the difference between functional
> and esthetic, while they may not grasp the difference between mind and
> matter so clearly.