Companies and Patents

[xdrudis at tinet.org]

> On 12 May 2002 at 22:16, Xavi Drudis Ferran wrote:
> 
> > On hardware, it depends. The criteria is if the invention 
> uncovers new insight
> > on nature, physical forces, properties of matter... then it may 
> be ok. 
> 
> No - this is science. Laws of nature are not patentable, e.g. 
> Newton could not patent
> gravity.
> 

Sorry, I didn't express myself right. 

I meant to patent new processes or devices created by discovery 
of new laws of nature, or at least by experimentation of its application 
to areas where they hadn't been tested. I didn't mean to patent the law
of nature, just the process or device that uses it. 

And even so, I'm not arguing for any kind of patent. I think they _may_
be useful in those cases. If practitioners think they aren't, then 
they aren't.