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[FYI] FFII Advisor Dr. Karl-Friedrich Lenz on certain Aspects of Patent Law.



<http://www.ipjur.com/03.php3>
<http://www.ipjur.com/2004_03_01_archive.php3#107928689748417100>

FFII Advisor Dr. Karl-Friedrich Lenz on certain Aspects of Patent 
Law.  

Mr. Karl-Friedrich Lenz, Law Professor at the Aoyama Gakuin 
University in Tokyo, has decided to provide a comment on my earlier 
posting on the removal of a certain US Patent from the public on-line 
patent database mainatined by the U.S. Patent and Trade Mark Office 
(USPTO). Dr. Lenz writes:  

"[...] On the other hand, Axel H. Horns might be right in commenting 
that the basic social contract behind the patent system is granting a 
temporary monopoly in exchange for public information. That would 
mean that the very fundaments of the patent system require that every 
lunatic on the planet is served by the Patent Office with information 
about how to use ricin for the next large scale attack.  

That in turn would seem to lead to an excellent argument for 
wholesale abolition of the patent system, if anybody should get 
inclined to call for such abolition, for example as a reaction to the 
mess caused by software patents.  

"Look! The patent office is helping terrorists to develop their WMD 
ability! And we can't even stop that without compromising the basic 
social contract the patent system is built on."  

This is a strong argument. I am personally very much interested in 
preserving a free Internet. However, I draw a line at pages 
describing technology to build weapons of mass destruction. Leaving 
this information freely available can kill people. The level of 
damage possibly arising from that is extremely high.  

I'll be happy to come back to this case if I ever feel that there is 
no other hope left than calling for abolition.  

And, by the way, if the patent in question can still be found in 
foreign databases, that only proves that it needs to be removed from 
those immediately as well. [...]" Firstly and on a more pragmatic 
level I must say that Dr. Lenz's proposal to remove the said patent 
from other on-line databases is as futile as the manipulation of the 
public database of the U.S.-PTO was because of the said patent 
document has been in the public since more than fourty years, and 
surely there are too many copies out there barring any attempt to 
successfully re-collect all of them. These copies are not only 
availabe in more or less centralised databases but also in 
collections of patent documents stored on CD-ROMS and sold to 
everybody who wanted to have them, not to forget the paper-copy 
collections maintained in many places around the world. A lot of 
patent information centres, companies with an interest in patents, 
patent searchers, patent document suppliers and the like own vast 
collections of patent documents on CD-ROMs or even on paper. You 
can't put such stuff back into the bottle after more than forty 
years, and any attempt to calm down the genral public by such actions 
is in effect nothing else than disinformation.  

Secondly, I would like to note that the said patent, if seen from the 
perspective of 1962 (the year in which the patent was granted and 
published), is not necessarily as directed to "lunatics" as 
attributed by Dr. Lenz. I am neither a chemist nor a pharmacologist 
but I know that sometimes poisonous substances extracted from various 
plants might be valuable pharmaceuticals if given at a very low 
dosage or if chemically modified. So far as I know today there is no 
medical usage of ricin or of ricin derivates but might it have been 
worth in 1962 just to consider thinking of such potential "positive" 
usage of ricin? It is a rather simple task to point at the risk of 
terroristic misuse of ricin from today's point of view. It is quite 
another task to forsee future implications of any new technology.  

Finally, I think that it is necessary to point out some more general 
implications of Dr. Lenz's proposal. It is not very difficult to use 
the "International Patent Classification (IPC)" scheme to wade 
through myriads of patent documents e.g. in the field of explosives 
(e.g. IPC Classes C06B, C06C) or weaponry technology (e.g. IPC 
Classes F41, F42). Should all these documents be kept secret? 
Moreover, reportedly the bombs in the Madrid commuter trains have 
been triggered using some mobile phone technology. Thereorectically, 
patent documents in this field might have been helpful in preparing 
such devices. Why not trying to keep secret even all patent documents 
in the field of telecommunication?  

Each and every effective technology has a certain potential to 
provide power to those individuals who are in a position to make use 
of it. To tackle the fear of terrorism this way would mean that any 
powerful technology must be locked away and hidden from the general 
public, and only a small sworn-in fraternity of "monks of technology" 
trusted by the state can be allowed to deal therewith as it is 
currently attempted to enforce with regard to nuclear weapons 
technology (without much success as it looks). This would be, 
needless to say, absolutely incompatible with any concept of an open 
society.  

The above-quoted comments provided by Dr. Lenz are interesting all 
the more as he surely can be seen as an influencial adivsor of Mr. 
Pilch, President of the FFII e.V. So it is not very much surprising 
that Dr. Lenz considers public anxieties against mis-use of 
technology as a "strong argument" to harm the patent system even if 
he serves some lip-service to assure that he is interested in 
preserving a free Internet. Effectively, there are strange parallels 
between the position of this advisor to the FFII e.V. and proposals 
coming from another side as already reported in my earlier posting 
there.  



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