Geeklawyer doesn’t always agree with Court of Appeal judge Sir Robin Jacob’s decisions (he probably doesn’t fret too much about that, one suspects) but at a seminar for the Society for Computers and Law he spoke unadulterated good sense:
“Do we need patents for computer programs? Where is the evidence for it?”
Along with Hugh Laddie, Robin Jacob often asks rather blunt non-legalistic policy questions. This is utterly one of them. Geeklawyer replies respectively “no” and “it’s a bit bleedin’ sketchy at best my Lord”.
He also said:
“IP rights themselves may have reached a bit of a swing of opinion. One is detecting public disquiet in a number of areas of intellectual property, asking: Are we going too far? There’s a serious worry about patent offices and how you stop them from granting pretty ropey patents,”
Hear hear. Geeklawyer has been saying this for years and it’s encouraging to hear such a senior judge say the same.
[…] Given the current controversy over software patents and the Article 52 exclusions this is a matter of some importance to the software industry. Geeklawyer looks forward to writing more on this soon. http://geeklawyer.org/blog/2006/01/16/128/ […]