On Sun, 18 Mar 2007 12:10:13 -0500, John Fields
wrote:

On Sun, 18 Mar 2007 16:23:20 GMT, Jonathan Kirwan
wrote:

On Sat, 17 Mar 2007 23:16:20 -0500, John Fields
wrote:

snip
My point, though, was that if the OP copies the patent for practical
use he'll be infringing the patent unless he gets permission to copy
it from the owner of the patent.

I've been learning from reading these points. But I believe you are
taking a narrow view, here. In Europe, I gather any implementation of
a patent that's just for personal use is completely exempt. So this
may be a US-only thing.

---
If by a "narrow view" you mean according to US law, then you're
right.

Yes, that's what I meant.

I have no idea how infringement is defined in Europe,

In following up with your comments and references, I then found some
suggestions about what I mentioned regarding the EU. I'm no expert on
any of this, just vaguely interested.

but my
personal view is that if it's not my invention and I copy it in
order to keep from having to pay the inventor his just due then I
have stolen from him what he deserved to earn and am nothing more
than a common thief.

And here we may need to disagree, though I'm not interested in
debating it at length. The patent system wasn't created because of
some fundamental underlying idea that 'theft of ideas is wrong' and a
conclusion that inventors are under some attack by thieves demanding
social remedy, but instead because there is a value for the social
commons in encouraging inventors to disclose what novel things they
discover that might otherwise be lost as an art when they die.

If the EU constructs a patent system, which is also based upon the
commons idea, but designs it somewhat differently to serve different
exacting design purposes, I see no problem with that, at all.

Jon