Re: [Patents] "Betrayal of physics"

[Hartmut Pilch <phm@a2e.de>]

> This is why the patent office has chosen to call them computer-implemented
> inventions, rather than software-implemented ideas. And it would appear
> that this tactics works rather well, since this term has found it's way into
> a directive, despite the fact that software-implemented ideas are not
> at all inventions. I wonder how many politicians have noted this.

See also 

        http://swpat.ffii.org/papers/eubsa-swpat0202/kinv/

I find the term "software-implemented xxx" even more questionable than 
"computer-implementec xxx" though.  Software is on the idea side just as 
much as on the implementation side.  If you want to express an idea 
concisely, you'll use a higher programming language.

The word "implementation" is already wrong.  It tries to create a
dichotomy which is not used elsewhere in the patent system.  You don't say
"chemical-implemented inventions" etc.  The object of the claim is a
chemical product or process, and in the case of software patents it's a
computer program, claimed in broad terms so that many instances/variants
("implementations") are covered.

-- 
Hartmut Pilch, FFII & Eurolinux Alliance              tel. +49-89-18979927
Protecting Innovation against Patent Inflation       http://swpat.ffii.org/
330,000 votes 3000 firms against software patents    http://noepatents.org/