Re: [ITPOLITIK] Preliminaere preliminary answers from SSLUG

[Erik Josefsson <sslug@sslug>]

On Thu, 2002-06-20 at 00:45, Erik Josefsson wrote:

> Q4.
> Yes and no. You will certainly have no legal means to exclude patents on
> business methods. EPO has already granted business method patents in
> spite of EPC 52.3. See Q2.

in spite of EPC 52.2

> Q5.
> There seems to be a growing concern within the US that the patent
> practice has gone too far, and that something needs to be done to
> rectify the situation in the US. We should learn from the US experience,
> and avoid making the same mistakes.

The EU is potentially a larger software market than the USA. Perhaps EU
should take another path than the US and limit the patent system to
areas where we know more about the effects of patents. Everybody wants
to limit the patent system, a reimplementation of EPC 52, perhaps with
additions as suggested by FFII, should be considered as an option.

> Q6.
> Regulations on regulations in not a good idea, but one measure to be
> able to study abuse of the patent system is compulsory registration of
> infringement claims, either at a national patent office or at an
> european patent survey institution.
> 
> Perhaps that can stop fishy patent-holdup busineses.
> 
> Economists regret that they are unable to study the informal economy of
> licencing, patent hold-ups and other threats. Very few patent disputes
> ends up in court where we can see them.
> 
> 
> Q7.
> Many inventions are brilliantly trivial!
> 
> But the situation of an inventor is somewhat different from the daily
> work of a programmer. On a daily basis a fairy skilled programmer comes
> up with problem solutions that are one by one EPO-patentable, but the
> result of the whole complex structure of the complete computer program
> is generally not easily EPO-patentable. Many programmers think that EPO
> software patents are just obvious normal problem solutions.

which they are "by default".