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On Thursday 07 July 2005 11:15 am, Tony Sumner wrote: > I was in Belper last week and went to see the museum, housed in a > famous cotton mill. They had examples of the machines we all read about > in school, viz the spinning jenny (Hargreaves), the water frame > (Arkwright) and the mule (Crompton). On the wall behind the mule > it said that Crompton did not take out a patent on his invention, Don't compare hardware patents for physical inventions (ones that you can trip over / walk into) with software that is a form of speech. Software may exist in or on certain physical media from time to time but it has no substance of it's own. Like speech, it can consume resources when stored but it has no physical mass. Arguing from the physical invention stand point will only lead to confusion about what is and what is not a software patent. > thousands were made, the Industrial Revolution really took off > and Crompton died in poverty. That is because a physical invention consumes resources - it has a physical mass, it cannot be copied endlessly or easily. Copies are expected to have physical variations, making a copy requires nearly all the same work as creating the first prototype. Making a second copy requires exactly the same work as making the first copy and on and on. Software is copied endlessly with no physical variation and no extra work. Create a file, copy it once. Copy it again. Copy it a thousand times, each is identical and each copy took less effort to produce than the original and exactly the same amount as any other copy. Patents are fine for hardware inventions, they are impossible for speech. You cannot patent an after-dinner speech, so why a lump of C? In years to come, computers may have better speech recognition (and a better language than either C or Java) and we can literally talk to the compiler. How can anyone patent that? Patents aren't on ideas, they are on inventions - physical implementations of an idea, and a new and non-obvious technical idea at that. That's what the UKPO and EPO have forgotten. THAT is what we need the law to enforce and that is why we still NEED a harmonisation of the patent laws to reign in the patent officials. > application of the device. Patents inhibited development even in the > 18th century and they work now only because firms spend huge sums > looking for the cracks between existing patents. Principally they work via cross-licencing. A system that shuts out the small guy and creates a cosy inter-dependence of global corporations who cannot afford to sue each other any more. At which point, patents become self-perpetuating - as old ones expire you have to re-arm. Patents are like ICBM's. The only defence is to have so many that nobody would dare fire one at you. Mutually Assured Destruction. Now where have I heard that before? :-) -- Neil Williams ============= http://www.data-freedom.org/ http://www.nosoftwarepatents.com/ http://www.linux.codehelp.co.uk/
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