Re: [Patents] You have rights.. Software Patents are Illegal

[Bernard Lang <Bernard.Lang@inria.fr>]

On Mon, May 17, 2004 at 10:58:45PM +0200, Flemming Bjerke wrote:
> Søndag 16 maj 2004 13:36 wrote Bernard Lang about Re: [Patents] You have 
> rights.. Software Patents are Illegal:
> > I think Flemming meant by "work" the fact that one can define software
> > patenting within the existing legal system.
> >
> > The issues are more :
> >
> >  - does it work in the way patenting is intended, i.e. to support
> > innovation, economic growth and/or public welfare.
> >   (social contract)
> >
> >  - is it compatible with the traditional view, undisputed a few years
> > ago, that ideas should not be owned.
> >
> Exactly, I did not mean that software patents works well according to the 
> purpose of promoting innovation. But, probably, they work quite well if the 
> purpose is to enhance the power of a handful of corporations at the expense 
> of innovation and freedom.
> 
> > ---
> >
> > another point is that the European council wants to patent programs as
> > products.  And that actually means the abstraction, independantly of
> > its material representation.  That means non-material, whatever
> > arguments you may have about the representation of thoughts.
> 
> A brillant point, and a bizarre example of the all-pervasive EPO-logic: 
> Because software on a machine may be technique, ideas themselves may be so 
> too. But, this is also a consequence of the unique nature of software: 
> Exactly the same signs that express a performative meaning to a human 
> being, 

it does not have to be "performative" to a human being in order to
lead to a performance in the computer.
   That is the whole issue of declarative programming.  A program can
be a description of what you want, not how to get it.  It can be
typically a bunch of equations.
   Now, what is the technical character of a bunch of equations ?

The probleme is that abstract concepts like programming are a lot more
elusive than lawyers can understand, or want to.

> can in a computer perform physical processes, which for a human realises 
> the 
> performance expressed. 
> 
> Perhaps we should think of computers as unconscious processes in a somewhat 
> similar sense as in Freud's later works where sexuality were less 
> important. 
> The computer might be understood as an extension of (a part of) our 
> unconscious processes. At least, this thought illustrates how terrifying 
> patenting of software is: The best way of controlling society is by 
> controlling its unconsciousness.
> 
> >   It is a platonistic entity.
> >
> > It is actually similar for programs as processes, but the discussion
> > is more subtle.
> >
> > The point is that a program is only what it is interpreted to be.
> 
> Depending on its context.

depending on whatever does the interpretation ?

A classical thing for those who do programming languages is to build
different kinds of interpreters for the same language.

And what is supposed to be patented is the process, not the effect
... at least in classical patent theory.  Else it is impossible to
build a non infringing competitve solution, which is one thing patents
are classically suppose to induce.
  But in the case of programs, the process is generally unknown,
because it depends on the compiler.

Bernard

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