El Sun, May 12, 2002 at 07:16:40PM +0100, John Tapsell deia:

What are people's general thoughts on hardware/research/etc patents?

I think patents are bad for software. For other fields, where expensive experimentation and laboratories are need to discover need ways to harness forces of nature in useful ways, patents may work. But I won't say one way or the other for those fields, since I do not work on them, and I think people who work there should decide. In any field, the EPO is badly broken, the difference is that in software it cannot be fixed because patents on software are harmful, and in some other fields maybe it could be made to work for the good of society.

On hardware, it depends. The criteria is if the invention uncovers new insight on nature, physical forces, properties of matter... then it may be ok. If it is just a circuit composed by known devices interacting in known ways, then it is just logics (solid state software) and it should not be patented. SO maybe you should be able to patent a new transistor, but not a HDL design.

Correct me If I'm wrong, but it seems a lot of people feel they are good in general, but they last too long.

I don't know. In software, any positive number is too long, in other fields, other people should tell.