Re: [Fsfe-uk] Technical Effect Briefing Paper

[Philip Hands]

Sam Liddicott wrote:
> Thanks for the text mirror.
>
> In Bolton it was suggested that Technical Contribution as a patent requirement 
> is important because the patent office is lacking in access to prior art, 
> particularly for software (no old patents to compare?)
>
> We were told that 50% of challenged patents are overturned, mostly due to prior 
> art not available to the patent office at time of application.
>
> The technical contribution test helps counter this.

Well that seems totally back to front to me.  The combination of "technical
contribution" and "as such" nonsense seems to be the loophole that allows
the Patent Offices to accept patents that would otherwise be pure software.

The Vicom patent mentioned by David is clearly a manipulation by a computer
program of pure data by use of a mathematical algorithm --- If they were
using these terms to limit patentability, that would have been rejected on
two counts.

My take on what Technical Effect means:

  http://hands.com/~phil/TechnicalEffect.png

Cheers, Phil.

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