[Nottingham] Patents considered harmful?

[Robert Davies]

On Thursday 04 Sep 2003 09:56, Martin Garton wrote:
> On Wed, 3 Sep 2003, Robert Davies wrote:

> She is saying all the right things that sound favourable, but when you
> read the actual proposal you find it will allow most of the same abuses we
> already see happening in the US.  There is a lot of detail about this at
> ffii.org

This article in the Economist clarifies things, reflects the replies I got 
from the politicians, so appears accurate enough to me.  Basically where I 
got stuck, the phrase 'technical effect' and what it really meant, and the 
rest of the patent jargon.

http://economist.com/printedition/displayStory.cfm?Story_ID=2043416

Maybe you see the current state of play differently?

The whole point of patents, was as a way of sharing designs of physical 
objects in products, and spreading innovation.  Software is far easier to 
copy, so the Copyright / publishing model makes much more sense, the 
originators can distribute it without scaling problems of manufacturing 
plants etc.  Writing software is an expression of your ideas, in same way 
that a book author, journalist, research scientist or mathmetician works.  
Innovation depends on  building upon the foundations of others, and where 
software has been patented eg) field of crptography, the whole field was held 
back, with poor market acceptance.

I just don't see quite at moment how to get traction on the problem, the 
politicians are slippery...    at end of day, the directives are unclear and 
ambiguous, and can we even find out, how they voted?

Rob