[plug] [Fwd: Re: David Conran's talk]

[Colin Muller]

Peter Wright wrote:

> This is a bit of a risky notion - I wonder how many patents are on the
> record, but are literally not possible (at least using current
> technology) to implement?

If you think about it, that poses no risk to anyone at all - except for
wasting patent examiners' time. If it can't be made/implemented, then no
money can be made out of it and no-one could make/implement it for free
either, so who's being disadvantaged?

> I'm not quite sure on this area. I certainly think the bar needs to be
> lifted a _hell_ of a lot higher on patents in general, especially
> software patents, but I'm not entirely convinced that all patents
> specifically dealing with what we call "software" should be wiped out.

I guess that discussion could go on forever, and maybe we're straying
off-topic for this list. If you'd like to read more ins and outs of the
current debates, the archived patent discussions from Tim O'Reilly's
"Ask Tim" column are not a bad starting point:

http://www.oreilly.com/ask_tim/

Colin