Re: [Fsfe-uk] Fwd: [Fwd: [Free-sklyarov-uk] Patent office calling for comments]

[Brian Gough]

MJ Ray writes:
 > 
 > What is the solid research you would recommend?

I don't follow the literature myself but apparently Bessen & Maskin
(MIT/Harvard Businness School) are supposed the leaders in the field.
www.researchoninnovation.org has links to various papers.

According to the representative of the EU 'Information Society'
programme at FOSDEM there has been a major shift in thinking among
academic economists in the past few years against strong patent
protection for software due to their discovery of "combinatorial
transaction costs" (or some term like that -- I don't remember it
exactly) acting as a barrier to innovation.  But, government and
politcal thinking is many years behind the current economic thinking
(according to him) so still favors software patents.

He said that to win the SW patent argument it's therefore only
necessary to persuade governments to catch up with the current
economic thinking and research.

According to him the old 'strong protection' research promoted by
companies who want SW patents is now considered badly flawed by
serious economists.  There was also an economist from Paris
(Sorbonne(?))  there and I think he basically agreed.

I don't know whether how much of this is true, but this is what he
said.