[ILUG] Enda Kenny and Patents

[David O'Callaghan]

On Mon, 2004-07-12 at 00:31, Enda wrote:
> Paul Jakma  wrote:
> 
> > 25 years certainly is too long for software, The grant period should
> > be *much* shorter and/or possibly commensurate to the costs of the
> > industry concerned, eg no more than 5 years for software, no more
> > than 10 years for patents in general or whatever.
> 
> Not sure 5 years is long enough for software patents. Take 9/11 for
> example.... its resulting in biometric passports, which will in reality get
> fully introduced no sooner than 2007, 6 years after the terror event that
> could inspire a software inovation in that field.

I find your example a bit cynical, but apart from that, should the
patent system really have to care about this sort of latency between the
time of the patent application and the time the "market" decides the
device is useful?

If I had patented a time-machine in 2004 and nobody was interested in
using such a device until the time-travel craze that took hold in 2026
then surely it was my bad luck.

David