Darren New <dne### [at] sanrrcom> wrote:
> Warp wrote:
> >   (Of course being able to patent methods is a braindead idea all in itself.)

> I disagree. Patenting a method for manufacturing something seems quite 
> reasonable to me. Why would you want to deny a drug company patents on a 
> better way to make a particular drug, or deny a tire company a patent on how 
> to vulcanize rubber with less pollution?  That's a serious question here. Is 
> there some reason I can't think of why such patents are a bad idea, assuming 
> that one believes *any* patents are a good idea?

  I think that one major difference between the Americal and European
patenting ideologies has not been mentioned in the thread, which is why
not being able to patent ideas and methods might sound irrational:

  In the European patenting system (at least in principle) you cannot
restrict what people do. The only thing the patent restricts is selling
of the patented products.

  Here it's completely legal for someone to take a patent, build the device
described by that patent and use it for personal use. The patent does not
restrict that. Only if you start mass-producing the patented device and
selling it to people (or even distributing it for free), that's when the
patent restrictions kick in.

  Being able to patent ways of doing things, like in the US, would restrict
what people can *do* in the privacy of their home. If you can patent combing
your hair in a certain way or exercising a cat with a laser pointer, you
would be restricting people's behavior and ways of doing things.

  Those are, of course, quite extreme cases. However, there's a much better
example: Here recipes cannot be patented (nor fall under copyright). That's
because a recipe is a description of the way of doing something. You cannot
restrict what people do and how.

  Being able to patent eg. a method for vulcanizing rubber is completely
akin to being able to patent a food recipe.

-- 
                                                          - Warp

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