On Tue, 2012-03-20 at 16:36 -0700, Adam Williamson wrote: [lots elided]
> I was asked to reconsider my "invention" under another light: I was > using captors to the external world. My prediction had an impact on a > hardware product. In fact, every software patent you can think of can > be > reconsidered as an hardware patent. In the extreme case, isn't moving > electron something physical? > Oh come on, this is such a ridiculous argument. Of course moving electron is something physical, unfortunately for the author that part is *not novel*, it's what computers do, and it is not an inventive step you can claim as new, which is one of the fundamental criteria to award a patent ... in theory because POs* all over the globe do not do their job in this regard. In fact those that still want to argue on this line become even more ridiculous and claim their software move electrons in a special way, different from another program ... of course for some reason they do not patent patterns of electrons moving, but they patent, in effect, ideas (not specific solutions, but the whole field) and mathematical formulas. But the problem is even deeper. Software Patents very seldom promote any kind of innovation, on the contrary they are a weapon to keep small firms from growing into dangerous competitors in established markets. In the EU patents just exist, they are not basing their existence on a constitutional mandate, but the EPC** explicitly exclude software as such. In the US instead patents have their root in a specific constitutional provision that says that this kind of monopoly can only be granted if it promotes innovation, this means there is no specific ban on software patents but given they arguably do not promote innovation they should naturally not be allowed, now you just need to wait for the US Congress to realize the Constitution tells them they cannot allow patents that do not promote innovation, good luck with that :) Anyway, software patents are filed in the EU, and are very often accepted by the EPO. They not sanctioned by any treaty, also thanks to a hard battle fought by activists and the FFII a few years ago that resulted in the first time a grass roots semi-unstructured lobbying group was successful in overthrowing a European Directive in Parliament. Software Patents are not good in any way, they are bad in many ways, including the fact that even those that do not like/believe/want them are forced to file patents once they reach a certain size to have some defensive weapons. And this compounds the problem, because too often these patents are later gathered by patent trolls when companies file for bankruptcy and are forced to sell all assets they can spare. Simo. * Patent Offices ** European Patent Convention -- Simo Sorce * Red Hat, Inc * New York -- devel mailing list devel@lists.fedoraproject.org https://admin.fedoraproject.org/mailman/listinfo/devel
