Re: patenting colimits?

[David CHEMOUIL <David.Chemouil@onera.fr>]

Hello,

On Tue, 26 May 2009 05:46:09 +0100 (BST), Dusko Pavlovic
<Dusko.Pavlovic@comlab.ox.ac.uk> wrote:
> *but* if you write a book, and present pythagora's theorem in it, you will
> not only be able to copyright it, but it will actually be almost
> impossible for you to distribute your book without copyright it, and
> without selling the copyright to a publisher. so anyone who wants to use
> your version of pythagoras' theorem has to ask your publisher's
> permission.

More precisely, AFAIK, copyright effectively applies to the *form* that you
used to describe Pythagora's theorem. As such, no one is allowed to reproduce
it with the same exact form as you long as the copyright holder doesn't grant
him or her that exclusive right.


> patents are crazier than copyright --- but maybe not that much crazier.
> you cannot patent mathematics, but you can patent "method and apparatus"
> for a particular application of pythagoras' theorem. (they always call it
> "method and apparatus".) you cannot patent modular exponentiation, nor the
> conjecture that inverting it (ie computing the discrete logarithms) is
> computationally unfeasible. but you can patent a method and apparatus to
> share a public key by exchanging and multiplying two modular exponents.
> the essence of your originality argument will rely upon the novel use of
> the conjecture that the discrete logarithms are hard to compute, on which
> the security of your system is based.

Let us however recall that patenting algorithms is possible in the USA or in
Japan but certainly not in the EU, until now (despite much repeated lobbying
from pharmaceutical and IT companies). Still, the European Patent Office
(EPO) has already accepted tens of thousands of such patents, by cheating
with the law (indeed, the law says that you can't patent an algorithm "as
such", which the EPO interpreted as : you can patent an algorithm as long as
it is part of a "technical mechanism" such as an MP3 player, for instance).

Without even entering into social or economic outcome of "openness" of
results, or so-called innovations (see Maskin's publications for more
information, for instance), I'd like to point out an ethical issue here. That
is the harm done to a 500-year, or so, social contract between scientists
acknowledging publicly, that is in publications, that they stand on the
shoulders of giants or, with less grandiosity, on other colleagues' results. 

Of course, there is a strong incentive, to say the least, in many institutions
for the "valorisation" of results. My point is that a strong "openness" (such
as publications under "creative commons" or release of software under
free/open-source licences) may give a far better valorisation of results than
strong, defensive, appropriation, while being more compliant to centuries of
scientific practice. 


Best regards,

dc

-- 
David CHEMOUIL
ONERA/DTIM - 2 avenue Édouard Belin - F-31055 Toulouse
Tel: +33 (0) 5 6225 2936 - Fax: +33 (0) 5 6225 2593
http://www.onera.fr/staff/david-chemouil


[For admin and other information see: http://www.mta.ca/~cat-dist/ ]