|
To me it boils down to the "non-obvious" test of a patent.
In the case of drugs, it is not obvious that chemical compound X will treat condition Y. Even when we think it may be the case, it takes years of animal and human trials before we accept that it does. Therefore, this deserves a patent.
On the other hand, when I see a phone number, it is not a very big leap of faith that I would want to use that number. Furthermore, there is no technical hurdles that must be solved to use that number -- just pass it to the dialer app.
This is quite different from the corresponding pharma situation. I know that I want to cure heart disease, but how to do it is not obvious. In the case of recognizing and dialing a number any reasonably competent programmer can do it. In the first case, it is to society's benefit to have the drug discovered and to pay for testing and commercialization of the drug. In effect we are paying with limited exclusivity for the pharma company to research and trial the drug. In the latter case, there is no innovation beyond the concept, and that concept is quite obvious. It would be as if we let a pharma company patent the idea that we want to cure heart disease instead of patenting a specific cure.
Similarly for many other software patents. I remember designing a e-commerce shopping cart before I ever heard of Amazon's one-click checkout patent. It was obvious that we wanted to make it as easy on customers as possible. This meant allowing customers to save information (if they wished) and offering them a brief checkout.
So patents=yes as long as we are getting something of value for our offer of exclusivity. And the rule already exists, just start enforcing the non-obvious test on inventions.
|