[affs-project] Pantent Consultation: Inventive step high enough bar?

[Alex Hudson]

Glyn Wintle at FFII-UK steering pointed this out:
http://www.patent.gov.uk/about/consultations/inventive/index.htm
Apparently, it's too hard to make it available in HTML, so here's a dump
of their PDF if you don't want to download it for whatever reason:
http://www.alcoholicsunanimous.com/chod/patent-consult-2006.xhtml
In short, the questions are:
      * Is the inventive step requirement for patentable inventions in
        the United Kingdom right for inventors, the public at large, and
        the UK economy?
      * Are too many "trivial patents" being granted?
      * Or are innovation and competitiveness best served by easy
        patenting with low hurdles?
Any input we put in here would be along the lines of "you're granting
software patents which are obvious". Now, the name of the game here is
probably to trawl through patents they've granted and do an analysis. I
think we need to be careful of railing against their inability to do
proper prior art searches, so the arguments would need to be a "this
doesn't build inventively on this <other knowledge not prior art>", if
that makes sense.
What do others think? We have til May, so plenty of time to polish.
Cheers,
Alex.