Re: You have rights.. Software Patents are Illegal

> Christian Beauprez:
> >Inventions (e.g. monopolies in patent law) are supposed
> >to be granted because experimentation (with no guarantee
> >of success) is an expensive business.
> >Computer programs contain only logic and abstraction- there is no
> >experimentation required in order for me to know what a computer is
> >going to do with my piece of code- nor any expense to implement it.
>
> Only in the most trivial cases. Any significant computer program needs a
lot
> of testing and trial-and-error to get working. A finished computer program
> is the result of this effort; a bit of code on the back of an envelope
> should never be patentable.

This isn't experimentation in the sense of science. Yes I know that when I
write code I can make mistakes (e.g. a syntax error) but it doesn't mean I
don't know what the instruction is going to do when stated correctly. If it
did, it would be impossible to program. This is about human error rather
than scientific experimentation.

You could equally say that the author of a book takes time, effort, and
experimentation to write a book (books can also take many years to write) .
Does that mean authors should be able to patent their plot lines? I
personally believe that for intellectual achievements copyright is adequate.

But even if it wasn't, it is the agreed standard of protection for computer
programs that comes with obligations of its own. Which ever way we want to
dress this up the author's rights would undeniably be prejudiced if
inventors were allowed to claim programs executing  within the scope of a
patent.

If people want to patent the ideas behind computer programs then they should
renegotiate the treaties democratically- not insist wrongly that they
require us to patent software, which is something I hope we can both agree
on.



Sincerely,

Christian.