🚀 go-pugleaf

    Not within "modern" times.  Mr. Sternlight has pointed out that it
    was debated and settled publicly in the '50s.  I was in high
    school then and missed the debates.  I would appreciate a
    reference that sumarizes them, what parties were involved and how
    the decisions were made that detemined existing policy regarding
    public use of publicly funded invention.  It may well have
    compelling logic behind it but it sure isn't obvious from here.

Reference: Owning Scientific and Technical Information, edited by
Vivian Weil and John W. Snapper, published by Rutgers University
Press.  Contains a number of articles/essays on the history and ethics
of the patent system.  Highly recommended.  Brief description of the
1950's change: through the 19th and first half of the 20th century,
the novelty requirement for getting a patent became more and more
stringent.  Around 1950 an invention had to have been born in a "flash
of genius" to be patentable (I believe that doctrine came from Oliver
Wendell Holmes).  Congress then legislated the current "not obvious to
a person of ordinary skill in the art" criterion.  There is also
pretty good article in the American Heritage magazine of Science
and Technology from a couple years ago but I don't remember the
specifics.  (That's actually not a bad magazine by the way).

Regarding your (Rcain's) discussion of university inventions, I feel
you don't go far enough in saying the public should have rights to the
invention if public money paid for the development.  Unlike
corporations, universities are tax exempt, which means they're
effectively taking money from the public whether or not the invention
was developed with grant money.  In my opinion, if universities want
to collect patent royalties from the public, they should be taxed just
like any other for-profit corporation.

Regarding RSA in particular, remember also that the motivation of
patents is to provide an incentive to invent: the public gets the
benefit of the invention in exchange for the inventor getting a
limited monopoly.  But RSA was invented without this incentive (we
know this because nobody thought to apply for patents until after the
invention was already published, which is why it is not patented in
Europe, where applications must be filed before the invention is
published).  So in exchange for the monopoly, the public in this
case got *nothing*.

For info on why software patents in general are bad for almost everyone, 
write league@uunet.uu.net and ask for a copy of the position
paper "Against Software Patents", or ftp it from 
prep.ai.mit.edu:/pub/lpf/patents.texinfo.


	Paul Rubin
	Member, League for Programming Freedom.

Disclaimer: my opinions not Telebit's, etc.