On Sat, 19 Jan 2002, Bernhard Reiter wrote:
On Fri, Jan 18, 2002 at 07:28:44PM +0100, Loic Dachary wrote:
[France specific but in english to share with everyone]
Loïc, thanks for the report and the effort.
I have a small remark regarding political strategy in the software patent field:
My friend suggested to compare the software patents issue to the genome patent issue.
IMO this point has to be handled very carefully.
The serious information really shows that software patents do not help to reward the group investing and producing innovations.
As for patents in the area of pharmaceutical industrie the discussion and research is not completely done. Thus the fear of an unfair system with patents in the area is as justified, but experiences and research currently make it less well known as the software patent field.
If we make both points together there is a small danger that the danger of software patents will be underestimated.
There is (was) a discussion around software being speech or expression. Like the language is. (check out DeCSS case with the gallery of DeCSS implementation without compiler for example) Can we go like that with genome ?
If I remember correctly my courses of biology, all the genome uses a representation with some proteine. (like ABCDBCDACBD...)
So, is there a compiler for that (an interpreter in the cells?) ? Is it expression ? speech ? speech of nature ?
Can we collapse genome and software engineering into one big class ? like Software Expression ? or is it a crazy idea ? If we check the Universal Declaration of Human Rights :
"Article 19.
Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers. "
Yes, there is some issue with article 27(2) about protection. Are we the author of the genome ? I don't think so.
This is a crazy idea but is there legal case around that ?
alx