GregNews upset about Klemens article on software patents

[PILCH Hartmut <phm@a2e.de>]

Gregnews of 2007-02-01 attacks an article 

    -  IDIOTIC ANTI-SOFTWARE PATENT ARTICLE FROM SOCIOLOGIST KLEMENS

with his well-known 

     http://swpat.ffii.org/players/aharonian/

claims about how information is indistinguishable from matter and therefore
necessarily patentable:

  Drawing the Line: The Rise of the Information Processing Patent  
  BEN KLEMENS 
  The Brookings Institution - Center on Social and Economic Dynamics 
  January 16, 2007

  Abstract:      
      Now is the right time to revisit an old but still contentious question:
  should software and business methods be patentable?

      [Greg note: only contentious if you know nothing about science,
      engineering, computer science and business - like a sociologist.]

  On the legal front, the debate hinges over whether a claimed invention
  consisting of an information processing step plus a trivial physical
  step can be claimed as a bona fide physical innovation.

      [Greg note: Ah yes, a sociology expert's use of the "physical" in
      an argument, who knows nothing about modern physics's views of
      what is physical.  Ben - you are idiot if you write nothing about
      the modern quantum views of the "physical" being manufactured out
      of information, making your argument completely silly.]

As we know, most or maybe all the readers of this list, except for Greg
himself, have shown themselves to be "idiots" in this sense, unable
to find support in for Greg's claims in the evidence which he cites
to support them.

Greg continues to quote Klemens and proposes an interesting view of the
CAFC:

  The Supreme Court ruled three times that it can not, but the Court of
  Appeals for the Federal Circuit ruled that the combination must be
  considered as a whole, meaning that it is to be treated like any other
  physical invention.

      [Greg note: why does the CAFC do so?  Because the Supreme Court's
      understanding of the physics of the "physical" is pretty low.  Not
      surprising, where you have Justices like Scalia bragging about his
      ignorance of science.]

It may indeed be that the CAFC consists of people who think in a similar
way as Greg does.  There has also been an article in a german law journal,
written by a patent judge, claiming that information is the 5th force of
nature.  This claim has so far, AFAICS, not been put forward by
physicists, only by patent experts.

  On the economic front, there is no self-contained information processing
  industry: every business in every field uses software and business methods.
  For a multitude of reasons, patents are ill-suited for such massively 
  decentralized industries. Therefore, this paper recommends a return to
  the distinction that inventions consisting of information processing plus
  a trivial physical step be barred from patentability. 

      [Greg note: bad enough his science is nonsense.  But if he had read
      and understood papers on the economics of software patents by 
      Professors Robert Merges and Richard Mann, he would realize his
      economic arguments are nonsense as well.]

The Merges study was, IIRC, another lawyer study which found that the software
industry is, in spite of all the patents, not dead yet.

--
 Hartmut Pilch                                    http://a2e.de/phm
 Treasurer of the FFII                            http://money.ffii.org
 Protect Innovation from Over-Regulation          http://eupat.ffii.org