ThePatent

Deutsch das Patent

The Idea

1. legal protection for utilization and derivation of benefit from some invention
2. letter of appointment
3. authenticated licence for certain professions

Patents are granted for new inventions (as opposed to discoveries) which allow for commercial utilization and benefit. with the exception of:
a) Inventions which applications would contradict morality
b) Food, luxury foodstuff and medicine
c) chemical compounds
whereby for (b) and (c) the manufacturing process for the materials may be patentable, while the material itself is clearly not.

Inventions are only patentable, if they are a noteworthy enrichtment of the state of the art. The don't count as new if they are not described or used within the last 100 years in such a way that an expert of the specific field could apply them.

A patent grants a monopoly to any commercial use of the invention such as keeping for sale utilization.

Patent laws exist since the industrial revolution, when mankind started to combine the principles of natural laws in several ways.

It's important to note that for a reason:Patents are always granted for the combination of natural laws. Never for the laws themself.See also: http://swpat.ffii.org/papers/eubsa-swpat0202/prop/index.de.html#mensmat

Inventing in the sense of patent law means harnessing the forces of nature, which do not follow the rules of intellectual creation and must be verified by experimentation (letting nature answer questions) rather than by mathematical proof (letting the human mind answer). Only in this field can there be a macro-economid justification for granting a 20 year monopoly on a novel teaching.== public risk== Patents are sort of a deal between the general public and a private body. As with any deal there's the risk of deceit. See http://www.pubpat.org/ . There's also an article about the imperfections of the current american patent law.

history

By 2006 the European Union has EPLA? on stage, which has horrible problems with souvereignity.

1. remember European Banana Union Day.
2. http://www.patent.gov.uk/patent/history/fivehundred/origins.htm .

Software Patents

Since software became somehow patentable in the USA?, patent protection hinders and substitutes research and development but make a great tool to safe taxes (shaping the profit margin). See http://www.researchoninnovation.org/swpat.pdf and an analysis by Jan Hofmann of Deutsche Bank, who found patents harmful to software.

Remember proofs are programms.

http://righttocreate.blogspot.com/2006/06/reforming-software-patents.html

2004: the german government has broken it's promise to vote at 18th May in european councel to protect data processing from patent monopols or at least define precicely what consitutes a "technical contribution". For details see: http://kwiki.ffii.org/?Cons040518En . This brings Europe closer to a dangerous situation of legal incertainty. Will the use of electronic media become illegal for legaly binding processes? (See also DefineInsecureModeFalse.)

2006 Lehman: TRIPS?http://dooooooom.blogspot.com/2006/03/lehman-trips-was-mistake.html

http://www.bailii.org/ew/cases/EWHC/Ch/2006/705.html

IBM? position derived by in-depth consultation rightfully rejects business method patents.

Medical Knowledge (e.g., Gene) Patents

Gene patents are as wrong as any patent on expressions is. Patenting genes seems to be a case where patent law infringes with very basic rights like the choice of food you eat. We all (lawmakers, layers and everyone on theirs own) have to decide which law is the higher value (HoeheresRecht [german]). Recommented reading: http://www.etcgroup.org/article.asp?newsid=398 , http://downloadaborted.blogspot.com/2004/06/open-source-life_21.html

This essay breaks the law.

Patent law failed for medicine.

Econimoc studies

interesting study ... also has a lot to say about the dangers of monopolies and some things about the influence on patents:

With regards to innovation, it may be useful to compare the role of FLOSS?, which in its nature supports diffusion of knowledge, to patents that are justified for, among other things, promoting disclosure of knowledge and resulting innovation. In fact, patents have been found empirically to be a poor means of promoting disclosure. Arora et al (2003) find that "patent disclosures appeared to have no measurable impact on information flows from other firms, and therefore no measurable effect on R&D productivity". ...

Relevant Laws

Germany

Patengesetz 5. 5. 1936

European Union

The great confusion. Everything is in flux. http://swpat.ffii.org/ read how we could gain a patent monopoly on democracy using the 20th Feb 2003 software patent directive and some positive argument towards patentable processes in software.

Collected Remarks

These remarks where added to the page from outside. But I did not come around to review them.

wired 2004/08/06,
http://taint.org/2004/08/20/024522a.html ,
http://www.ipsummit.info/3questionscq.php

Novel's position http://www.novell.com/company/policies/patent/ .

http://www.tbray.org/ongoing/When/200x/2004/10/12/PatentTheory

Beuprez paper explains this very thouroghly: http://www.beauprez.net/softpat/defence.html .

Groklaw http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=2005041208505337 !!!
Erik Josefsson http://www.ffii.se/erik/NLOPEN/http://wiki.ffii.org/FfiiEpp0506En .

http://righttocreate.blogspot.com/2005/11/patents-chilling-science.html ,
http://www.ipjur.com/2005/12/uk-cipa-on-patent-infringement-should.php3 ,
http://money.cnn.com/2006/01/25/news/newsmakers/davos_blackberry.reut/index.htm?section=cnn_tech ,
http://www.ovum.com/go/content/c,377,62989 ,
http://news.com.com/Static+over+RFID/2100-1008_3-5357189.html

22th Oct 2007: Let's Make a Deal - The MS?-EU Settlement