Re: [Patents] Even worse abuses with copyright

["Christian Beauprez" <beauprez@beauprez.fsnet.co.uk>]

Dear Seth,

I noticed your post on the abstract ideas point. I wrote an article on this
only today.

Kind Regards,

Christian

The FFII - Campaigning for real safeguards for software authors
Since the advance of the patent system into areas of abstraction- (i.e. pure
ideas with no real physical teaching) The web has been filled with
organisations and individuals claiming to want to reverse the trend into
trivial patentability.

I personally find that the FFII and their allies are the only ones I
consider to represent my interests as a software author. Many other
organisations like to preach about bad patents but offer no solutions except
throwing more money at the patent system in the hope that one day inventions
will be suitably non-obvious.

This however does not solve the core problem of software patentability. The
ideas in software are as abstract as the ideas in a book- this is why people
who write software have always been known as authors. Invention law is
supposed to be for physical products or processes whether they use software
in part or not- even in the USA abstract ideas are not supposed to be
patentable but of course they are under the guise of newspeak.

The term "Computer implemented invention" itself is an insult to democracy
and is nonsensical. To be able to claim ideas in software are physical
because they run on a computer is as ridiculous as claiming that ideas in a
book are concrete and physical because they can be claimed with the paper
and ink. Nevertheless there is no shortage of patent "professionals" who
stake their  reputations on this assertion.

Only when we insist that inventions must be physical teachings of applied
science will logic patents that have proved so problematic subside- anything
less is nothing short of claiming ownership of  human logic. The
non-obviousness criterium will not prevent the damaging effects of these
types of patents; what is arguably a non-obvious thought to one person can
be perfectly obvious to another. No one has the right to claim a mere
thought or an idea as part of their intellectual property- it is time to
open up the statute book again and remind people what is and what is not
statutory material.