That doesn't sound primative at all. I'm on the front line of the 'keep software patents out of Europe' war. It is interesting that it sounds to me profoundly anti-American. But then I am spending a huge amount of time kicking holes in the US Patent Office's argument that unless you reward Americans with a monopoly they won't work, and that monopolies are the only effective way to ensure interoperability and the like.

Yeah, total BS, I agree. We've already shown that geeks know how to collaborate on extremely precise standards without patent protection. If something works, and works well, it gets adopted. Planning happens. Getting lots of gnarly patents embedded in something so ephemeral as software is a recipe for disaster. Next thing you know, authors will be patenting plot elements, like "the twist" -- pay royalties next time you twist the plot in some way. Silly. Same diff.

I am very glad to see that the USPO does not speak for all of you, and that sentiments expressed in the October 2003 Federal Trade Commission report "To Promote Innovation: The Proper Balance of Competition and Patent Law and Policy" see http://www.ffii.org.uk/swpat/ftc/ftc.html is more representative of your views. A steady diet of monopolist arguments can badly distort your perceptions ...

Thanks Kirby, Laura

Yeah, keep fighting. "Intellectual property" is somewhat oxymoronic, as *every* idea has been synergetically built from others. We're born naked and helpless, with no language to speak of. Putting up fences amidst this free flow of ideas, parceling it all out as if it were real estate, is presuming a flawed analogy. For one things, ideas don't "transfer" they "copy" (I give it to you, I still have it for me). Every human is an edit/recombine studio, taking inputs from the environment, adding value, and putting it back out there. Throwing a lot of roadblocks in front of innovation is what keeps us all living in relative squalor, compared to how it could and should be. Basically, patents are a way to keep others from stealing good ideas. But if that had been enforceable since cave man days, we'd still be in those caves today. GPL and so on is really important to human evolution. Engineers, more than most, know that artificially restricting our freedoms to willingly share and advantage one another is both dangerous and stupid. That being said, I'm not against keeping some things secret or under wraps, until ready for prime time. I still believe in wrapping presents, letting things cook, season and so on. Immature technologies abound. The patent office is overflowing with ideas that went nowhere (some deservedly). To liberalize around intellectual property isn't to suddenly open the flood gates, as you still need people to comprehend, to learn how to operate the stuff, and that takes time. Like, we have all we need to make the world a better place for everyone, and yet here we are, screwing up, day after day. Too slow. Let's pick up the pace here, shall we? Kirby