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Richard Salz wrote:
> The fundamental difference is that patents have limited lifetime, and have
> generally (perhaps even universally?) been designed as a trade-off. For
> example, as one legal document puts it, the goal is "[t]o promote the
> Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to
> Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and
> Discoveries."
Right, so patents (and copyrights) in the US are meant to serve purely
utilitarian goals. So the question we should be asking is whether
patents on software do in fact "promote the Progress of Science and
useful Arts". It's certainly unclear to me that they do, at least as
currently constituted. (And if they don't, there's no US constitutional
basis for having them at all.)
Jim
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