🚀 go-pugleaf

>Software patents could, IMHO, serve a usefull purpose.  However, they
>should be given out judiciously.  How many programmers would grant a
>patent on XOR or a "data entry screen"?  C'mon.
>
>And since I personally can't afford the $10k it would cost to get a
>single patent search, I'm not really likely to go hunting next time I
>write an expert system that uses X as its interface and happens to use
>a data entry screen to get information from the user.
>
>                                      Tom Emerson
> /  /_) /_  /_                    University of Vermont
>/  / \ /__ /__                     tree@newton.uvm.edu 

I fully agree with you.

I think that are two main points of view to this problem

The first one adresses those who would have to grant the patents:

For those the problem would be: What criteria will we use to grant
a patent ? This is a difficult problem to solve. There are of course obvious
cases but no doubt more arguable problems will appear. And then who are you 
going to trust the decision ?  
I'm not sure that there is an affordable way of solving this problem ...
We must consider that the humam rersources needed to enforce a system
with a minimum of credebility would be enourmous. Don't forget that for
the system to work you would have to pay good software engineers. Don't forget
also that the decision would have to be quickly made .

This brings us to the second side of the question:

Even if a reasonable system is built, who is going to pay for it ?

Obviously the persons who would use the service. That means you. And as you say
and because the custs involved would be high the service would be expensive.

This price would put off every small software company ...

So in short I would say:

It's very difficult ( if not impossible ) to grant software patents judiciously.Even if we could manage that the prices involved would be enourmous
This proces would put off every small and medium software company.
Thus making more damage then good ....

Standart Disclaimer here.
--
Fernando Manuel Hourtiguet de Vasconcelos  INESC - Instituto de Engenharia de
fmhv@inesc.inesc.pt                                Sistemas e Computadores
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