Re: [Patents] Reponse du ministre de l'industrie par rapport aux brevets logiciels

[James Heald <j.heald@ucl.ac.uk>]

Flemming Bjerke wrote:

> Fredag 14 maj 2004 09:43 wrote Denis Chalon about [Patents] Reponse du 
> ministre de l'industrie par rapport aux brevets logiciels:
>
> > Lorsqu'une entreprise du secteur logiciel souhaite proteger sa
> > propriete intellectuelle, elle garde le "code source" secret.
>
> In 2002 the main argument that the Danish Minister of Industry defended 
> software patents with, was that the alternative to patenting software is 
> keeping software innovations secret. That would hamper innovation and SME's 
> opportunities. 
>
> Just to point to how your argument could be twisted.

Trade secrets and know-how can still be licensed under NDAs.

In any case, even though legally not considered "obvious" in the sense 
of patent law, most software patents appear to be sufficiently shallow 
and 'of their time' that an independent team would be very likely to 
re-invent them anyway.

The FTC report was very skeptical of any useful disclosure value in 
software patents.