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

[Laurence Anthony]

Pavel, I completely agree with your analysis. I love the way you
annotate the sentences below to highlight the issues:

>P:
>I guess the main concern is the fact(?) that *most* "software" patents
>are of this trivial ("horror") type, while among "normal" patents these
>are (still?) just exceptions. (That is at least my impression, I don't
>remember seing any serious statistics on this, and they could probably
>hardly be done, anyway.)

But, I think the reality is that many, many normal patents are also trivial.

Saying that, I do think that the world of patents is going to start
influencing our research more (especially as universities are starting
to push for more patents from their faculty). However, I think there
are also some positives here. For one, it forces us to reflect on our
research and see what aspects are really original.

>P:
> I would not worry so much about Richard M. Stallman personally - he
> represents one extreme and he is a quite controversial personality

As you say, it seems that he is using extreme examples to make the
point. This relates back to Mike Scott's earlier comment about
motorbikes and food. In fact, you can almost certainly use the same
technique to argue against any human activity; there are always horror
stories.

I suppose one way we can defend our field is to defend our members
against patent attacks if it ever happens. So, if one of us suddenly
gets called to court for developing concordance software, perhaps we
can rally the members and write to the relevant people (courts)
explaining the stupidity of the action. Until that happens though,
maybe it's better to just get on with research and not worry too much.

By the way, for those interested, just Google "Stupid Patents" and
you'll find links to 1000s of ridiculous "normal" and "software"
patents. It does seem that the patent problem might be getting a
little more serious, but I think it's still very hard to tell.
Perhaps, it's a bit like a bubble industry. At the moment, more and
more people are applying for patents. But, when courts start throwing
out more and more stupid patent cases, the patent holders will start
to realize that it's not worth the cost of applying for and defending
them. Then, the world might become a happier place.

Laurence.

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