Subject: Re: Petition for a Software Patent Free Europe (fwd)

From: PILCH Hartmut <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 8 Jul 2000 20:21:59 +0200 (CEST)

It is time to bring Lojban into the European patent reform discussion, as
I am doing below.

---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Sat, 8 Jul 2000 20:13:16 +0200 (CEST)
From: PILCH Hartmut <[email-masked]>
To: <a group of friendly members of the European Parliament>
Subject: Re: Petition for a Software Patent Free Europe

> Our opposition to software patents was restated in Parliament on
> Wednesday 6 July

Great.
We would be very interested in detailed updates.

Meanwhile, the press reported rumors that the European Comission was
softening its stance on software patentability, but we found these rumors
to be completely unfounded, probably part of a disinformation campaign
from the DG Internal Market. We asked the EC for clarification:

http://petition.eurolinux.org/pr/pr3.html

Moreover, the FFII is also directing more criticism to the Community
Patent plans, demanding that patent inflation be brought under control
before the system is further centralised:

http://swpat.ffii.org/xatra/egp27de.html 
(german-language draft only so far)

The idea is to put in some institutional checks and balances and to repair
the incentive system in such a way that the patent bureaucracy becomes
less corrupt (please read http://www.bustpatents.com/corrupt.htm) and more
interested in quality, e.g.

(1) patent offices no longer receive money for granting patents. Patent
fees are abolished.
(2) novelty check: patent office no longer conduct patent examination
themselves. Instead this is given into the hands of certified
companies, who are held liable later if they have not found all
prior art (similar to the liability of financial audit companies)
(3) inventivity check: after the novelty check, the "goal of the
invention" and the "prior art" is published, and anybody who submits
the same solution within 6 months becomes co-patent-owner. If there
are more than 3 such co-patent-owners, the invention is deemed 
not inventive enough and rejected.
(4) translation requirements should not be sacrificed as light-heartedly
as the EC is proposing. Offering patent owners "good value for little
money" isn't everything. The patent system has some public-interest
purposes such as
(a) telling everybody (not only patent specialists who are fluent in
English or other patent languages) what they are allowed to do
(b) popularising advanced technological knowledge (e.g. knowledge
about real inventions, selected by rigid procedures as above
suggested, not masses of cheap trivial patents)
(c) cultivating technical terminology in multiple languages. 
Translation can be made cheap by using a logical language (www.lojban.org)
which allows reliable automatic translation into many languages. It is
contradictory to abolish translation requirements at a time when
other directorates of the EU are investing a lot of money in making
a "multilingual information society" viable.

We have some more ideas of this kind that could significantly improve the
quality of the system. They all boil down to the slogan "Less is more". 
It is now time to raise the issue of patent quality. M. Noteboom (DG 15)
told Eurolinux that currently the EU is putting a system in place that
should be good enough to serve for the next 20 years. Now is the time to
make sure this is the case, and I think this requires a huge effort.

Thank you.

-phm

_______________________________________________
Presse - Presseverteiler des FFII
[email-masked]
http://ffii.org/mailman/listinfo/presse