Re: [Patents] Re: patent sharks against critics

[Rui Miguel Seabra <rms@1407.org>]

On Wed, 2004-05-05 at 15:24 +0200, Serge Marelli wrote:
> On Tue, 2004-05-04 at 11:37, Hartmut Pilch wrote:
> > Yes.
> > Patents are about use.
> > A user must make sure that his supplier takes the responsibility for all 
> > claims.
> 
> This looks insane to me.
(...)
> I don't understand how this would stand in a reasonable legal system.
> It seems insane and impossible.

You're forgetting what patents are supposedly granted on:

  Real Inventions, which are very hard to make on your own.

It is indeed insane and impossible in software, since for any given
competent programmer an idea might be very trivial a short time after
the problem is faced and thought through.

Even a simple begginer might ingeniously combine some trivial pieces of
code creating something which could at first not look trivial, but very
much so looking back.

Even anyone with a generic data processing machine could stumble upon
such a case.

That machine is the computer, which is what makes it insane.

Software patents would block anyone with a computer away from
innovation.

Rui

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