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

[Xavi Drudis Ferran]

El Mon, Mar 11, 2002 at 07:33:22AM +0000, Alex Hudson deia:
> 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.
> 
I've tried to explain why I don't understand your arguments, but I think
we are not making much progress to find much common ground (except that we 
dislike the Comission's directive proposal). I think we somehow have some 
different set of axioms that makes communication difficult. I try to find
a general rule that fits my wish of what should or should not be patentable.
You seem to work by examples, but I don't understand the definition of 
some of your examples, and others I simply don't want to be patented
and you want. 

> 
> 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.

I don't want to tell you how to run your country, and I don't want you 
to export your case law system to mine. I'm even starting to ask myself 
why we are in the same political object (EU) if we are not going to let 
each other have any say in any affair. 

> 
> 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.
>
I don't find that rule clear. For example, you say VHDL is not software 
because it does not run. I say it is because it runs a silicon lithography 
machine to print chips (or whatever the technique is), and I consider robots 
programs software, and 
I consider Postscript files programs. I think the fact that we disagree
is proof that your rule "it is software" is not clear enough. But then 
you may say I'm a moron, and my lack of understanding does not make 
your rule less valid. As I said, I don't see much progess towards 
any agreement.
 
> 
> List of things not allowed: "software". It's quite simple.
>

Who said "keep it as simple as possible, but no more" ?. 
 

> 
> 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.
>

A program that runs on a known computer can not teach us how to
harness nature any more than the computer without the program, which
we already knew, because its only way to interact with nature (or
harness it) is through the computer. But I don't think we can agree
on this. There seem to be profound metaphysical differences between
your world and mine. What do you want me to produce, and example?. 
I can't produce any example of patentable software according to 
the Dispositionsprogramm criteria (that's why I like it!). If you 
want examples of non-patentable programs, then take any program.

Take a word processor: it teaches us ways to handle symbols in a document, 
but nothing on forces of nature or how to use them. 

Take a simulator 
for whatever physical process: it is not showing us how to use forces 
of nature that we didn't know. At most it is showing us more clearly 
the outcome of forces we already knew before we wrote it. If the
simulate process was not known (i.e. you've discovered new natural forces or 
ways to use them
and have written a simulator to ilustrate it) then you are probably better
patenting something else, a practical device. 

If a known computer with 
a simulator can carry out your "invention" then you just found a 
new way of combining the peripherals actions into something new, 
just as a world processor causes the printer to combine ink on paper
in new ways, and that does not deserve a patent.

This does not mean that logical creations (failing Dispositionsprogramm) 
are worthless. They're very important. But their economics are different
and their progress is impeded by patents, not promoted, so they must
 be unpatentable.

It all boils down to a disctinction between matter and mind that we don't 
seem to share.
I don't think everything's an algorithm or nature obeys reason. For me 
reason is our instrument to understand nature, not a constraint on nature.
Bacteria do not live only in microscopes just because we only see them there. 

And reason alone is not able to explain nature. We need reason + observation.
The observation part may require expensive laboratories and experiments 
that might not exist without the incentive of a monopoly. The reason part 
would be there with or without monopoly incentives, because humans are 
creative, and they don't need infraestructure to think. In fact monopolies 
on reason reduce raw materials (previous usable works of reason) 
and impede creativity. Creativity in reason 
is well protected by copyright, creativity in observation is not. 
So the criteria to allow patents should be: if it takes expensive 
experimentation
or testing then it deserves a patent, if it doesn't take it then it doesn't. 
The closest we can't get to that unmesurable criteria is the harnessing nature
principle, which is simple to me and yet effective. It seems not to be 
simple to you, maybe because your categories of mind and matter are different 
than mine.

I think we have explained our points to each other as well as we possibly 
could, 
and we're not understanding each others points not because we don't listen, 
but because we don't start from the same set of axioms (e.g. mind vs nature), 
so 
what each other says makes no sense. I find difficult to think under your 
axioms.

So I don't feel very useful right now. I apologize for:

- having broken nettiquete by having Hartmut's messages sent from the recipient 
list to another one without asking him first, having sent messages to a list 
I'm 
not subscribed.

- having dared to propose how law could be in the UK without obviously knowing 
anything about your country, maybe offending people in the process by 
questioning
your institutions. Please understand that in the culture I come from, 
criticizing
institutions is almost the national sport. I guess criticizing one's own 
institutions 
does not feel the same as foreigners criticizing yours. So sorry.

- having bored most people in the list with a topic which does not seem 
interesting
to most 

- having wasted Alex Hudson's time without being able to offer any ideas 
useful for him.

- having wasted Hartmut's time in an attempt to communicate with a community 
I thought we could coordinate efforts with, but which does not seem to have 
many goals in common with us. 

- having put MJ Ray in a difficult position between us all and leading him to 
bail out midflight.

- being always too verbose

- abusing German spelling with Dispositionsprogramm (not to say English 
anywhere else)

So fare well my friends, thank you for your time and be sure to ask if you 
think 
I ever can help you in any way. I don't think I'll join the list, after all.

P.S. MJ Ray, I think you have a point when you say case law should be taken 
into account when writing directives (regulations in general). I may not want 
judges decions to be binding for future trials, but they're certainly an 
expert opinion to consider when elected representatives write law. In this 
case, 
the EPO case law clearly shows undesirable results. I thought it would be the 
same 
for UKPTO, but I won't claim it any more because I won't care any more. 

(off-topic:) My latest theory is my problems had nothing to do with the 486. 
Maybe it was a bug or feature of the server. I had accessed through webmail 
some 
of the messages there (possibly not the first one), so when fetchmail connected 
and sent a LAST command the server said 0 (the first message was unread). Then 
fetchmail downloaded all messages. But for some reason the server did not 
count that downloading as good for marking all messages read, and since I 
didn't let fetchmail 
delete them (I wanted to archive them at home), next time I went to the server, 
LAST returned 0 and all previous 
messages were fetched again. It may be something else, but I can't think of 
anything.

-- 
Xavi Drudis Ferran
address@hidden