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Confident that EU patent law won't pass

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Stryker:

quote:Originally posted by flap:


Er no, that's my whole point. My only issue with the email quoted above was that software patents are actually even *more* absurd than it indicates.
--- End quote ---


oh, i didn't realize you were the original one i quoted. oops. i think it's a horrible idea, but i'm just not so sure it's worse than for books.

flap:
I'm not saying it's worse than for books; that wasn't the point I was making.

Look, the person in that email said:

 
quote:Patenting software is as absurd as patenting a novel or a recipe.
--- End quote ---


The point I was making is that that is an inadequate analogy. If we were talking about patenting entire pieces of software then it would be relevant, but actually software patenting is about patenting individual features. No-one patents entire pieces of software, or books, or recipes. But even if they did, it wouldn't have any effect as they already have their work covered by copyright.

What they could have said was:

Patenting software features is as absurd as patenting a novel storyline or a genre of fiction, or a specific combination of ingredients to use in a recipe.

And to take your example about MS Word, what I was suggesting is that MS would never patent Microsoft Word, specifically. Yes, they'd like to patent 'the word processor' as a general idea, but if they patented the specific program 'Word', that wouldn't have that effect.

Stryker:

quote:Originally posted by flap:
And to take your example about MS Word, what I was suggesting is that MS would never patent Microsoft Word, specifically. Yes, they'd like to patent 'the word processor' as a general idea, but if they patented the specific program 'Word', that wouldn't have that effect.
--- End quote ---


What's the difference? I could patent a program called "bob", it could be a benchmark for my video card. wouldn't a patent for bob include video card benchmarks, as that is what bob does? and if now, what's to stop someone from patenting video card benchmarks? it could happen, and i think that's what this is about. if nvidia had video card benchmarks patented, you think ati would be happy with that? a patent for "bob" would allow the owner of the patent to sue anyone who has such a benchmark. while a copyright for bob would allow him to sue only if his code is being stolen.

flap:

quote:wouldn't a patent for bob include video card benchmarks, as that is what bob does?
--- End quote ---


If you patented Bob, all that would do is prevent people from writing another Bob, that worked in the same way and did exactly the same thing. If someone wanted to patent video card benchmarking, they'd patent 'video card benchmarking' as a specific feature/idea/algorithm, and not the entire program. They might use this patented idea in many programs, or Bob might be a program that does dozens of other things unrelated to benchmarking. That's why people patent specific features rather than entire programs. If you look in the About box of programs like Word, you'll see (I think) references to multiple patented features. MS would have had to patent each of these individually; it wouldn't be sufficient to patent the entire program in one go.

jasonlane:
I think that the e-mail could have been worded slightly better. Nonetheless what there trying to do with this change in law will not benefit the industry on the whole.

Personally I think it's a bad idea.

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