[dvd-discuss] Rogan Reshaping USPTO Under Deceptive Terms

[Seth Johnson <seth.johnson(at)realmeasures.dyndns.org>]

(Hartmut Pilch of FFII and EuroLinux comments.  Forwarded
from the Patents list, patents@aful.org)

-------- Original Message --------
Date: Wed, 12 Jun 2002 16:57:09 +0200 (CEST)
From: PILCH Hartmut <phm@a2e.de>


At

  A MESSAGE FROM THE UNDER SECRETARY AND DIRECTOR
 
http://www.uspto.gov/web/offices/com/strat2001/21sp_covermemo.htm

commissioner Rogan says:

<<

When the Founding Fathers created our new Republic, they
carefully drafted our Constitution to be limited in scope
and Federal authority. As they painstakingly crafted the
institutions of our new government - institutions such as
the presidency, the Congress, and the judicial system - the
Founders also saw fit to include a clause anticipating the
establishment of a patent system and the protection of
intellectual property. With their attention focused on the
birth of a new Republic, why did they feel the need to deal
with what appears to be, at first blush, an obscure area of
law?

The answer is as important to our generation as it was to
theirs: they understood that their agrarian colony would
never grow to be an economic and technological giant unless
there was an incentive for inventors to create, and for
other inventors to study and improve upon the creations.
From this foresight came the American systems of patents,
trademarks and copyright protection, which give inventors
and authors the ability to enjoy, for a limited period of
time, the exclusive economic benefits of their genius.

>>

He goes on to tell the story of how Thomas Jefferson, as the
first patent office director, examined a lot of patents
himself, apparently because of the importance which he
attributed to the patent system.

Of course he does not quote what is really written in the US
constitution.

The lies are quite easy to see:

- There is often enough of an incentive without patents
- Some countries were industrialised successfully without a
patent system.   The patent system was not all that
important and often more harmful   than helpful.
- Where ownership may extend is not an obscure question but
quite central   to any constitution.  Jefferson et al
opposed the patent sytem but had   to compromise.  What is
written in the constitution reflects this   compromise. 
Rogan has good reasons not to quote it.
- Unlike copyrighted creations, inventions can not be
"intellectual   property" (e.g. connected to the intellect
of an individual) but   rather "industrial property"
(privileges serving a certain industrial   policy)

Rogan surely knows all this.

Just another example of how unscrupulous the representatives
of today's patent system are.

Although we can't expect any help from people like Rogan,
the push for reform itself is a good sign.

At least at the conference in Paris the rhetoric of the
people from WIPO, OECD, Whitehouse and FTC sounded a lot
more reasonable than that of Rogan found here, except that
the abusive extension of the word "intellectual property" to
cover industrial property seems to have taken root
everywhere.

-- 
Hartmut Pilch, FFII & Eurolinux Alliance              tel.
+49-89-12789608
Protecting Innovation against Patent Inflation	    
http://swpat.ffii.org/
120,000 signatures against software patents     
http://www.noepatents.org/