[Corpora-List] Patent application for "Referent tracking of portions of reality"

[Laurence Anthony]

To Adam Kilgariff,

It seems like this thread is proceeding in ignorance of the horrors of
> software patents.
>

I just read the article, which is interesting. However, I think many of the
arguments against software patents could be made against patents from most
other fields. It seems to me that the speaker is basically against patents
of any form. He even introduces examples from other fields as examples of
the ridiculous nature of some successful patent applications. In other
words, the whole world of patents is a horror house! Also, he talks about
the idea of "one patent for one product" but I think most products in most
fields these days are based on multiple ideas (patents). Software products
are not a special case.

I think the most important points he makes are at the end, discussing what
we can do to prevent patent problems in software development. However, most
of these seem to be government level activities. Perhaps groups like the
AACL can make some kind of public statement on the matter.

By the way, I couldn't detect any "ignorance" in this thread so far. In
fact, I thought these issues were being discussed in a very thoughtful (and
accurate) manner.

Laurence.
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