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Patenting In The Burst Test
gerddie writes "Heise has an interview with S. Kiesewetter-Köbinger, a patent examiner of the German PA, about the cultural break, software patents will impose to Europe if they become valid. He points out the danger to open source and science, and that with patents on software even mathematical methods would become patentable because there is no longer any difference. There is also a companion article competition in the court room, that gives some more insight in the history and current state of the patent system. All is in german, but as always the fish is your friend."
"Software patents, they suck real bad, da da de dum"... in all seriousness, (and I don't have to say this part around here), this is a BAD THING COMING.
Here's my question: In light of the somewhat unfortunate fact that world economies are growing increasingly intertwined, especially given the rate of advances in digital communications, how great is the chance of my wonderful country (U.S.) eventually just deciding to "take the ball and go home" when it comes to countries that don't play by our current rules regarding software patents?
This strikes to the core of a problem America has always suffered from, namely a nasty elitist attitude regarding all things involving tech and government. While it's true that the U.S. has enjoyed relatively little fallout for this attitude problem historically speaking, how long can that last?
As an American, I suppose what I'm suggesting here is simply that U.S. citizens should probably start taking a closer look at how our internal government policy decisions (especially regarding technology issues) may eventually leave us out in the cold on the world economic scene. It only makes sense when you think about it; we've got the edge in a few areas for the moment, but tables have a way of turning whenever our good friend Murphy steps into the room...
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Check out Bounty Quest, they reward people for finding documents that mention the idea before it was registered as a patent. That way the patent does not fulfil the new criteria and becomes invalid.
You get paid too...
Idempotent operation: Like MS software, wether you run it once or often, that doesn't make it any better.