> Recognising the problem is often the innovation.
It can be an innovation, but it can be very hard for the PTO to tell just how much of an innovation it is. What happens a lot, I believe, is that the emergence of a new technology creates new possibilities, but the actual application of the technology to those possibilities raises certain problems that have to be solved. The existence of those problems is not obvious in advance of the new technology, but once people have it in front of them and start to play around with it, it starts to become more and more likely that someone will think of those problems. The evidence for this is the not infrequent occurrence of simultaneous or near-simultaneous invention.
So while recognizing the problem might be an innovation, it might be an almost inevitable innovation. Furthermore, much of the credit might arguably belong to the enabling technology that made a solution possible, and to the industry that developed and commercialized that technology.
To make an extreme simile, one could say the Internet is like the technology to allow us to colonize the moon, and so many of these software patents are like people booking trips to the moon, arriving, and then staking a land claim. It wasn't very much their own intrepid exploration that made it possible for them to stake that claim; there might have been a little of that, but mostly they're dependent on the massive effort, by an entire industry, that made it possible for them to get there in the first place. So the policy question is, have they really contributed so much that we should reward them with that land claim?
> So while recognizing the problem might be an innovation, it might be an almost inevitable innovation.
Or, it might not.
> Furthermore, much of the credit might arguably belong to the enabling technology that made a solution possible, and to the industry that developed and commercialized that technology.
So? They're free to recognize the capabilities and invent.
However, that's a red herring because you also don't want them to be able to get patents for recognizing the possibilites.
I get that you don't like "recognize the problem" inventions. Howver, can you argue against them on the basis of "it was inevitable" or "someone else should have gotten the credit"?
Which reminds me - can you name three inventions that weren't inevitable and how you know? I'm trying to figure out if your argument against "recognize the problem" patents applies more generally.
It can be an innovation, but it can be very hard for the PTO to tell just how much of an innovation it is. What happens a lot, I believe, is that the emergence of a new technology creates new possibilities, but the actual application of the technology to those possibilities raises certain problems that have to be solved. The existence of those problems is not obvious in advance of the new technology, but once people have it in front of them and start to play around with it, it starts to become more and more likely that someone will think of those problems. The evidence for this is the not infrequent occurrence of simultaneous or near-simultaneous invention.
So while recognizing the problem might be an innovation, it might be an almost inevitable innovation. Furthermore, much of the credit might arguably belong to the enabling technology that made a solution possible, and to the industry that developed and commercialized that technology.
To make an extreme simile, one could say the Internet is like the technology to allow us to colonize the moon, and so many of these software patents are like people booking trips to the moon, arriving, and then staking a land claim. It wasn't very much their own intrepid exploration that made it possible for them to stake that claim; there might have been a little of that, but mostly they're dependent on the massive effort, by an entire industry, that made it possible for them to get there in the first place. So the policy question is, have they really contributed so much that we should reward them with that land claim?