Anybody heard of www.priorart.org?
Since patents are great threat to Free Software (and software development in general), I'd like to have some constructive discussion about the problem (and especially about the priorart initiative) in this forum.
I don't expect this to become *the* forum about patent issues (there's already patents@liberte.aful.org, with very smart people in), but I think the topic is important enough to brainstorm about possible actions in the FSFE realm.
My first impression when I heard about it has been disgust, exacerbated by the fact that the initiative is welcome to some known free software personalities. I'm glad someone else confirmed my in-expressed points.
Mainly, I think the pro-swpat institutions are playing friends to better fool us. This "priorart" initiative can't help in busting bad patents; on the other hand it would help (if it has any effect, that I doubt) the patent offices and litigation companies.
One problem is that patents are mostly granted on so-vague claims that I don't see any way a repository of inventions can stop someone from filing bad patents (and someone else from granting them).
Also, current-art is increasing at an astonishing pace (if you include anything that is patentable under US-and-proposed-European law), it's definitely impossible to collect any meaningful amount of that. And why should I help them in making the system better? If they succeed they'll find it easier to export the US system here, and I am soon out of the market.
The final problem, in my opinion, is that publishing a real invention may well suggest malign people the filing of an obvious related paten. It has been demonstrated (in patents@) that patent offices consider "non-obvious" everything that is just "new".
Any thoughts, flames, suggestions?
/alessandro