Re: [Fsfe-uk] Fwd: UK Leading Patents?

[Alex Hudson]

On Sun, 2002-03-10 at 23:15, PILCH Hartmut wrote:
> A patent doesn't become good by just being novel. Apparently your
> electronics idea is a non-invention: a new logical idea which is
> translated into circuitry by known means.  I don't want logical ideas to
> be patentable. 

My argument, which no-one has shown a reasonable defence against, is
that all electronics are emulatable. Whether discovered or not. I don't
believe the whole of the electronics field to be 'finished' or
'discovered', though.

> What about the Nymeyer example from 1980 that is cited on
>       http://swpat.ffii.org/vreji/gasnu/uk/
> and that I cited here yesterday?

It's not in the patent database, and the patent number doesn't even
appear to be valid (UK patents start with 'GB'). The fact that you say
later legislation changed the validity of the patent means this argument
has no relevancy for me anyway. Should it? Can you provide a link to the
patent database?

> Why can't a proven good concept be applied to the UK, particularly when we
> are talking about a european directive ?

You haven't proven it's a good concept for the UK at all. We have an
entirely different legal system here. You're asking for our history of
patent judgements, the body of case law and the raft of interleaved
measures to be thrown out. That's not going to happen. If it did, we
would be in a greater mess than we are currently.

> If I understand correctly, you want the black box to be patented and thuse
> the software solutions, which usually seem to exist in the cases that you
> have in mind, to also fall under the patents.

You haven't read what I have written at all. Please go back and read it
again; I have explicitly said why software would _not_ be covered. 

> If neither by economic assessment nor by a clear rule 

Again, read what I have written. I have proposed a clear rule - "it is
software". That is enough, and clearer (I would suggest) that
dispositionsprogramm.

> The feedback they get is always pro-patenting.
> They have before them a poor applicant begging for a patent and only
> rarely someone disputing the patent in an opposition procedure.
> More patents means more power for them.
> The behavior of the UKPTO clearly that talking to them, even in a public
> consultation, doesn't change their mind even by a millimeter.

This attitude confuses me. You say they only get pro-patenting feedback,
then in your next breath you tell us it's a waste of time trying to talk
to them. Given they are part of our elected government, the day I give
up trying to lobby them for change is the day I give up on politics
altogether. I don't believe that they are bad people, and I don't
believe that they gain any more power out of allowing more patents. The
UKPTO has no power.

> > I would leave it at 'software is not included'. Technical effect or
> > dispositionnprogram or whatever, it shouldn't matter.
> 
> which according to your criteria as exposed before may mean nothing.
> You would at least have to come up with a list of examples of what should
> be refused and what granted.

List of things not allowed: "software". It's quite simple.

> Patents are granted not for systems, but for inventions.
> The form of materialisation (circuit or diskette) does not matter.

The materialisation does matter: you can't make it out of software. You
claim that all software inventions would fail the dispositionsprogramm
test, I have yet to see you back up that claim although I have asked on
a number of occasions.

> The patent is granted for a teaching about physical forces.
> A computer could play a role in an embodiment of that teaching, perhaps
> the preferable and only reallistically implementable embodiment, but still
> the teaching would be independent of software.  It would say something
> like "you mix chemicals A B and C together at environment conditions D E
> and F according to formula G and thereby obtain H".  You get the patent
> because the cause-effect relation of that teaching was not obtainable by
> calculation based on known mathematical models.

Then you have no idea how the chemical world works any more. People
don't sit in laboratories mixing together chemicals. They use computers
from day one to create their substances. They are able to model the
chemicals they use accurately, and experiment with materials in
software, looking for their desired properties, before actually mixing
the substance. Sometimes the substance behaves slightly differently than
the model, so the new physical characteristics are noted and fed back
into the computer model (we don't know everything about the physical
forces of nature) but at the end of the day, it's a competely virtual
material. Probably the last great material to be designed without
computers is teflon; unless something is discovered accidentally, it's
designed.

By the time they have finished, even if there is some novel property of
the material that teaches us about the forces of nature (it's more
stretchy than we would have believed, or the co-efficient of friction is
much lower than we thought was possible for a polymer, etc. etc.) it
obviously can't be patentable, since it was a computer that designed it.

> The inability of the UKPTO (and yourself) to come up with any rule for
> differentiating between "technical" and other algorithms demonstrates this
> point.  Read also Donald Knuths comments on this question in

I'm not trying to differentiate between the two. My last email stated:

"Algorithms are what the universe is made of, everything we do is
algorithmic. Defining what is mathematical and what is not is ultimately
useless."

Please, don't put words in my mouth, don't accuse me of ideas I don't
have, and at least read what I have written before responding. I
explicitly say there is no such rule and it is useless to try to define
one.

On a different note, the UK pages you have written are vastly improved,
thank you very much. 

Cheers,

Alex.

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