Stanislav Malyshev wrote on 2003-07-03: > EM>> Maybe conflicts between patents and technology advances were caused > EM>> because of non-professional staff of the patent office? > > Asking that, let's ask what kind of "professionality" is required from > them? Should they be an experts in software knowing to the least detail > every part of every program existing, for example? What would be > requirements to professional patent office worker? Note that patent office > is not exclusively software - they should also work on other things too. > Well, I see no reason why the person reviewing the software patents shouldn't be an expert in programming (but not knowing every existing program, of course). He should be required to be an expert, else how can we entrust him to grant patents in this field?
> EM>> Maybe a better computerization will help the patent office > EM>> reject patents that were "prior art"ed by open technologies? > > It is pretty hard to know this - for this, detailed analysis of the > functions of patented and potentially prior-art (meaning, just > almost every other in the field) applications required. I fear for a > patent office which is not really overbudgeted it is not actually > feasible. > Better computerization will most probably not solve the issue. It would help the staff, sure. But the staff should be competent and should have the correct guiding rules. And these should either exclude SW patents completely or be very demanding about them. There is no reason to expect better equipped staff whose task is to allow trivial patents to filter - but there is no reason to under-equip them instead of redefining their task. -- Beni Cherniavsky <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> "Reading the documentation I felt like a kid in a toy shop." -- Phil Thompson on Python's standard library ================================================================= To unsubscribe, send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the word "unsubscribe" in the message body, e.g., run the command echo unsubscribe | mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
