[ILUG] patents again

[Colm MacCarthaigh]

On Tue, Apr 26, 2005 at 04:52:58PM +0100, Conor Daly wrote:
> On Tue, Apr 26, 2005 at 10:55:11AM +0100 or so it is rumoured hereabouts, 
> Colm MacCarthaigh thought:
> > 
> > As I've said here before, I think the sad truth of it is what while
> > Software patents are economically bad for Europe, they are economically
> > good for Ireland, since a large part of our economy is based on the
> > encumbant patent-holders, and incentivising them.
> > 
> > Software patents will help those companies shut down competition in the
> > other european countries, and ultimately probably will benefit our
> > economy - in the short to medium term anyway. Our politicians know this,
> > they arn't stupid.
> 
> I presume they're also aware that the same multinationals will desert
> Ireland as soon as one of the new EU entrants offers them a better tax
> regime.  Having SW pats in place will make this a more attractive option
> for a country since their indiginous software industry will be dead and
> therefore, an anti-swpat stance from Ireland will better protect our
> dependence on MS, IBM etc...
>  
> So, could we use that then?

You're contradicting yourself. First you say it's all about our tax
regime, but then that it's about the local base.

Do you honestly think the likes of Microsoft, Oracle, Cisco, Google,
Yahoo, Amazon, ebay, Doubleclick and so on are in Ireland because of the
quality of local talent? That's just the token line the Department of
Enterprise and the IDA use in press releases. Until now it's been all
about our low rate of corporation tax and IDA grants, very little else.

With Google in particular ramping up there *now* is starting to be
a snowball effect, because people like Amazon realise that the others
already here are doing a lot of work attracting people in from all
over - so that there is a local base of skilled people.

But I don't think these people are primarily coming from grass-roots
small local outfits, it doesn't seem to work for that. And last I
checked, even Google has a thick-wad of patents.

I've been scratching my head for months trying to come up with a
convincing economic medium-term argument for politicans, and I still
don't see one. The best I can come up is to broadly handwave and speak
only about Europe's economy, just never mention Ireland sub-economy, and
hope they don't notice.

-- 
Colm MacCárthaigh                        Public Key: colm+pgp at stdlib.net