Z:gnu-www-ja-stallman-mec-india--b16f83-In the 1980's the Australian g/en

In the 1980's the Australian government commissioned a study of the patent system &mdash; the patent system in general, not software patents. This study concluded that Australia would be better off abolishing the patent system because it did very little good for society and caused a lot of trouble. The only reason they didn't recommend that was international pressure. So one of the things they cited was that patents, which were supposed to disclose information so that it would no longer be secret, were in fact useless for that purpose. Engineers never looked at patents to try to learn anything, because it's too hard to read them. In fact they quoted an engineer saying &ldquo;I can't recognize my own inventions in patent deeds.&rdquo; Now this is not just theoretical.