[DMCA-Activists] Re: Reader Letter: Don't Believe "IPR" Hype

[Seth Johnson]

Hartmut Pilch wrote:
> 
> > Taiwan should continue to be a nation built on innovation, rather than try
> 
> Just a sidenote: I don't know whether Alex wanted to get embroiled in the
> discussion about nation-building in Taiwan.  There is already a state
> called "Republic of China" on Taiwan, which ruled the mainland until 1949
> and is not in a hurry to reunite under undemocratic conditions, but by far
> not everybody in Taiwan would agree that there must be a taiwanese nation
> state in the long term.
> 
> Btw I have a Chinese book hyping software patents, written by an author
> from Taiwan and spread by patent lawyer friends on the mainland recently,
> but haven't found the time to report about it.  They quote the great
> achievements of their german patent lawyer friends in softening caselaw
> and making everything patentable.  This is important for them, because
> both sides of the Taiwan strait have german law and caselaw, including
> phrases about forces of nature, in their patentability statutes.  Now they
> are pointing to Germany as the authoritative country that is giving up on
> limiting patentability.  So we need some more articles there that point to
> the reversal of this tide, as seen in the EP vote of last year.  We are
> seeing far too little echo of this (also in the US, where EFF and Pubpat
> are focussing attention on the novelty of individual patents and failing
> to combine this with the general fight against swpat which isn't over
> anywhere and will never be).


I think some education regarding the "no difference between hardware and
software" analysis needs to be put out, to policymakers, advocates and
constituencies.  A lot of people get conned by software patent promoters
who put out this line.

We do get a lot of people who hear the argument that there's no difference
between software and hardware and conclude that it affects the question of
whether software is patentable.  They think that it's about whether it's
"hard" or "soft" (physical vs. "less so"), rather than that it's about
abstract processes regardless of the form in which they are represented.
In truth, as instructions devised for generic logic devices, software is
inherently abstract.


Seth

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