The video prominently features BU law professor and economist Michael Meurer whose book Patent Failure (with Jim Bessen) uses economic analysis to make the case that patents (particularly software patents) are a net drag on innovation. The video is purely one-sided.
Software is pure mathematics, and is purely abstract. This is fact, and a quick study of computation theory will verify it. It seems bizarre to people who haven’t studied computation theory, but it’s true. CS departments were branches of math departments for a reason.
Mathematics and abstract ideas are explicitly unpatentable. Your arguments for patentability seem to claim that they *should* be patentable. I do not think I need to explain why they are excluded; they are excluded because, *among other reasons*, patents on them tend to inhibit science and technology, and have no actual benefits. The same is true of patents on software, and there’s plenty of economic studies to prove that.
“I take issue specifically to saying that no one considers patenting while making software”
Not exactly what I said; people consider it in the “self-defense” arena and in the “get-rich-quick” arena.
Nobody decides to write or not write software, or to publish or not publish it, based on patent considerations. This is largely because, unlike in industrial fields, the economic difference between coming up with an exact blueprint and making the actual software is nonexistent. (In fact, the difference is totally nonexistent.) The protection of patents is not needed to finance the “transition to industrial production”.
Inventors in industrial fields with high costs of manufacture have an economic incentive to think about “whether it’s patentable” before deciding to actually build working models or going into production. They do consider them, for exactly that reason. Software writers don’t.
The essentially zero cost of making copies and the extremely low cost of prototyping and testing (amounting to inventors’ labor costs only) make it economically very different from industrial fields — and very similar to mathematicians and academics’ work, unsurprisingly.
Hope these answers help.
“I don’t understand.
Why does that guy with the eye glasses hoard the glasses all to himself? Why does he not share them with the open sight community?
Surely there must be some people out there who need to share his eye glasses on a no-cost-to-them basis. Eye glasses want to be free. Why does he not take them off and share?
Fair is fair. Share everyone’s software, share everyone’s eye glasses.
Posted by: step back | Nov 11, 2009 at 12:20 AM
”
Because you seem very poorly informed, I will ask you to look up the difference between a “rival good” and a “nonrival good”. If you don’t want to, I will simply point out that you MAY NOT use MY software. It is on my computer and you can’t use it. However, you can use YOUR OWN COPY of my software as much as you like, and it doesn’t hurt me at all! Likewise, the guy with the eyeglasses should certainly not object to others *copying* the eyeglasses.
This is the basis of the point that unauthorized copying is not “theft”, it’s “misappropriation”. It certainly isn’t theft of the software/music/data copied, because the original holder still *has* that data.
Similarly, unauthorized production of a patented item isn’t theft in any sense.
It cannot be considered “theft” of the *exclusive monopoly right granted by Congress* either, because although the holder is being deprived of his enjoyment of that monopoly right, the person doing the copying, or the unauthorized production, is not getting the monopoly right or the enjoyment thereof.
They are *damaging* that economic monopoly right. It is closer to “vandalism” if you want to compare it to a real malum-in-se crime.
Incidentally, it’s not cheating or plagarism either (unless you claim something as your own work when it isn’t, not the topic under discussion here) because those are both essentially variants of fraud, and there’s no lying involved in any of these scenarios.
HFTF,
a poet, is that you?
I’ve got impression that
here we are only two.
a phd and a poet
but when it comes to the law
bet on the box of rocks
hindsight from the future,
oh, so you are in a baptizing business too?
whose agony should stop by the way?
Agony Mouse, regarding your psuedonym, the mangling is on purpose and more fitting. see the post at Nov. 15, 5:13 PM specifically the last paragraph. when the agony stops, your moniker will be reevaluated.
hindsight from the future,
I was referring to the very same post that you referenced by saying “see i can post a message without calling you a name”:
Posted by: hindsight from the future | Nov 16, 2009 at 10:56 AM
and you still continue to mangle my pseudonym. Did you ever graduate kindergarten? Right about then, you should have learned that name calling obfuscations can’t help in discussions.
you (lawyers) probably already know that, but “In Re Bilski” seems to capture the current state of affairs:
link to en.wikipedia.org
In short: even Judges exhibit a rainbow of opinions on the matter, so I am dropping my hopes to find any valuables here, my/your opinions are just opinions and one will have to go very far in order to prove anything substantial.
As a personal lesson I found this paragraph useful (please pass this on to other software geeks):
link to en.wikipedia.org
My personal conclusion is that if we take a pragmatic view, then the patent system is left open for interpretations (as the rest of the legal system is) — IANAL, and I am biased (see personal), but I don’t see other way to digest this.
And the short answer for software patents is that:
1) under current conditions it is possible to patent any kind of software, business methods, and probably even law methods are not excluded. There are some suggested criteria on what should be allowed and what not, but there are no firm/precise/unchanging criteria, every case needs to be evaluated separately.
2) the interpretation of the law seems to be dependent on historical context, therefore over time some patents can be rendered invalid and some overturned, and this seems to be business as usual.
3) in order for the patents to be coherent with other laws (and to guarantee that they last for long after new laws are adopted), claimants will have to add special conditions to the claims (e.g. 1. this software does this and that with that kind of signals from physical world — to ensure the connection with materials, 2. the encryption algorithm should be run on >255 bits — any emulation of it in human mind is not infringing because humans simply can’t handle that many bits)
Having said that, some specific software seem to fall out of patent-eligibility:
software for generic computing. Which seems to be good news for open-source which focus on solutions for general public, such as software libraries (no connection to specific field of material world), operating systems for general usage, user interfaces, development tools, word processors, browsers etc)
However, some fundamental questions remain (apart from what Judges left explicitly open):
what if I patent my novel software solving some specific problem of one field of material world (clearly eligible), and then in the course of history somebody finds out that the same is applicable for signals from a different field, files another patent where the software is the same, but the field is different. Would the second patent be granted? or perhaps the first one would be rendered not valid anymore just because we have a different historical context where we find out that such software is more generic than we thought before?
Note, that such situation is very common in software world where we take metaphors from real-world and move them into virtual world.
Somebody has already raised the issue of the software context before in this discussion. I’d like to point out that formally speaking the context of software is very narrow/unambiguous, unchanging and independent from historical context. E.g. the interpretation of Turing machine’s code (theoretical analog of any modern computer) fits onto one page, the description of modern PC instructions fit onto one book, UML specification (rich set of abstract diagrams) also fits onto a book or so (and nowadays it’s getting formal semantics as precise as Turing machine). So all in all, software patents are quite fluid business and requires much more pragmatic thinking that just software inventions.
ignorance can be corrected. what you have may be a different story
“what will I find out there? another lawyer like yourself insisting to stay away from the law?”
“lookup your first words in the post just to find out that you are wrong”
my “first post” at Nov 13, 2009 at 06:07 AM simply says “if you really want to “understand”, stop your rants.” Stopping your rants is in no way the same as stay away from the law. I was inviting you to learn the law before you put out your crappy opinion of what the law is. are you being obtuse? even an academic should be able to understand such basic logic. why are you having such difficulty?
As the grunts would say – the dmbest person is a dmb smart person -well, actually they say something else, but the site censors wont let that go up.
“So eventually I just might go there, the question is, is it really worth it?”
agony, since you are discussing legal concepts, it would be wise to understand what the law is. i can be nice about calling your attention to it, but i dont have to be. you may be offended. ok. i am offended by your continual crap about wanting to learn yet staying away from the source of the learning. did you get your phd in baseless conjecture? if you are questioning whether it is really worth it to understand what you want to preach about, and you insist that your goal is to learn, how can you ask if it is really worth it – this belies your stated intent and proves my point.
yet another comment of mine wiped out while agony mouse gets to call me a trolling hypocrite – the censors should at least be consistent.
hindsight from the future,
“yet it seems as if you are here only to preach”
No, I am trying my best to take points by others too, however there are no points in your posts other than sending me to a legal department. So eventually I just might go there, the question is, is it really worth it? what will I find out there? another lawyer like yourself insisting to stay away from the law?
“see i can post a message without calling you a name.”
No, you are a trolling hypocrite: lookup your first words in the post just to find out that you are wrong.
Agony Mouse, i am not missing any points. you keep on saying you are here to learn, yet it seems as if you are here only to preach, and preach on bad assumptions of law at that.
or is this another attempt to put words in my mouth along the class warfare lines? are you now insinuating that i believe that people shouldnt learn about the law?
learn, please learn. but show that learning in not making assertions about law that are completely unfounded. such assertions are not helpful. you have a phd, you should be able to get it.
see i can post a message without calling you a name.
SteveW,
“There is no principle of “full disclosure”. There are principles around: disclosing enough so that one of skill in the art can practice the invention, disclosing the best mode of the invention known at the time of filing, and disclosing enough to demonstrate that the inventor had possession of the inventive idea at the time of filing.”
OK, thanks for observation, but the problem with software is that it is going to be very difficult to prove that idea is realizable without the actual implementation. You may have some inventions that work but the proof is not available and might never be available. Take a claim about P=NP (any non-deterministic polynomial problem can be solved by deterministic machine in polynomial time) for example — it’s an old problem, but nobody knows neither the answer nor a proof. Similarly there exist other undecidable problem which say that there is no algorithm to decide/measure any property of another algorithm. Thus you may have a great idea, patent it without proof (because proving is very hard and sometimes impossible) and then later find out that it is simply unrealizable. On the other hand one might have a brilliant idea, be unable to patent due to lack of proof and through it away even though it might work in practice due to some implicit unknown assumptions.
” If someone invents an algorithm to do X, and speed optimizations are Y, then Y is not part of X and need not be disclosed. Of course, there could be an argument whether “Y” is part of the best mode, but that would be difficult to make stick if Y did not affect the claimed operations of X – and further that’s not a 101 argument anyway and would belong in a different discussion.”
I agree, but I don’t understand what are consequences of this.
“There is no general principle of law stating that which is covered by one area of law cannot be covered by another.”
Yes, I do understand that, and I am not aiming at altering the law with exceptions for software. What I am trying to establish is a kind of “precedent” that abstract software patents for generic computing devices are bogus/irrelevant/not-allowed.
The treatment of abstract software that is supposed to be run on generic hardware seems to be a clear cut that such patents should not be granted. On the other hand, solutions of software running on special hardware is gray area, because:
1) invention claim is on hardware and software description is provided as part of the realizability proof.
2) the hardware is so radically different that the concept of software is different of what it is today.
“In your question of whether you can infringe such a patent by thinking about it – no. Thoughts in your head are not instructions on a computer readable medium being executed by a computer.”
That is exactly the problem, because software patent claim may consists of either:
1) literal software description (some form of code dump), such instructions are clearly applicable on machines, but then such inventions are covered by copyright laws. Would you allow such patents?
2) abstract software description (algorithms, diagrams etc), cannot be run on machines, but they are actually evaluated by humans. If you grant such patent, am I allowed to read and use my brain to execute the software from that patent without infringing on it?
Any more options?
From my very own field I could think of formal models, which share the properties of both: abstract diagrams readable by humans and unambiguous and precise so that are executable by machines. But that does not help as they are readable by humans and it was designed with that purpose in mind.
P.S. “hindsight from the future” you are missing the point: I am here to share and learn, and not to be mocked. Nobody said it is going to be easy. If you have some concrete reference, please share, thanks.
HierarchyOfPontificationBuckets,
“Re the poetry, I think that you allude to creativity in general.”
No, actually I meant quite literally: programming language design is very much concerned with human intuition. Friendly languages uses a lot of it, and using them is like writing a poem: if it “rhymes” then it is easier to check that your code is consistent and does what is intended. Check e.g. Ruby language community. And historically old languages look really horrible simply due to this reason: there are very few “rhyming” templates.
“Every now and then someone comes up with some software ideas that are like the Raven.. they’re new, creative, unobvious, all peers are amazed, and so on.”
This is all true with literature and it has a lot to do with real things: e.g. take a book on dating, there are lots of useful advices to be exercised, and I am not even touching Shakespeare, where there is a great deal to learn from.
“You’re splitting hairs. Let’s say there is no such thing as software.”
I am not saying that software is worthless, I am advocating that patent law does not apply (well) in this area and copyright does a much better job (IANAL).
Also observe that copyrights still apply even if you change just variable names — it’s like substituting character names in a novel and claiming that it is different novel. One can even apply some transformations (scale, tear) a picture, but the copyright still applies, one cannot just take over it without *substantial* change/contribution.
“Try looking at it this way. Suppose you found a machine (it’s a programmed computer, but we don’t know that). You observe it and test it until you figure out what it does and how. Now you want to publish a paper about the machine.”
I am sorry but if this is how innovations are “found”, then such description is no more than a story in some nice novel, i.e. such observation implies that the inventor himself does not understand the design of the machine in the first place.
“Would you describe a bunch of gates and the low-level ways they work together? No. It would be meaningless not to mention difficult. We would describe the behavior of the machine in a way that is meaningful to people. That description would sound like an algorithm or math or whatever, but that would not mean that the processor is per se “math” etc. Math and abstract language is how we describe what the processor does.”
The gates are too low level and one would go there if one would wanted invent new hardware. If you want to describe a structure of the software, then every bit matters, that is why I am advocating that copyright law is much better here and there is nothing difficult about it, in fact it works by default whenever the software code or implementation is created. I am not opposed to claims like “disk contains imprint of some software” — it’s fine, but I’d like to see a claim of type “software structure is like this and that, first perform this and then that” — such sentence is fine in the patent description (to show that the invention is realizable) but as a claim (IANAL) is bogus.
“Yes, but the nature of the law is that it is a system. It’s language in action. You build this system as a set of rules in human language with the intention of accomplishing a goal such as encouraging innovation or preventing financial fraud. Now being a system performed by human minds according to human language, the system is imperfect. Some desired outcomes don’t happen, and some undesired outcomes do. So you can’t just point to a single or few examples of the law not working according to its design and say it must be disposed.”
I love this paragraph, I can not agree more with it. But here is an exercise for you: substitute “law” with “software” — everything still holds except the goals are slightly different from “encouraging innovation or preventing financial fraud”. This is the only difference between (abstract, conceptual) software and law in this paragraph. Can you give me more differences? Otherwise, I would like to see (a reference to) patents on law if you insist on patents on (abstract) software (executable on generic computing device).
“Opensource is only a small piece of the software world. If patents are a hindrance to the opensource movement, that alone is not sufficient reason to dispose of the software patent system.”
It’s a technical detail, but no, it is the other way around: open source is the dominating software, it is in the core of almost any software system. Take a look at Mac OS: it started with BSD kernel. Take iPod and go to “about legal” menu item and you will find how much open source is embedded right there. Despite all of that, proprietary software try to emulate such process with “beta” testing and shareware models.
playing nice, well as nice as i can.
as any grunt can tell you, the dmbest person is dmb smart person.
i did not put words into your mouth. i did not use contradict and i directly quoted you.
“So I assume” – dont. look it up and find out. not only should you not assume, you shouldnt base your argument on bad assumptions of the law.
“If your point is that only lawyers can understand (patent) laws, them I am not falling for such obvious FUD tactics.”
more crap. as i pointed out last time you tried to play the bogus class warfare game, i dont care if you are a lawyer or not. i care that you at least try to get the law right. any non lawyer can post and if they dont flagrantly get it wrong, i dont care if they are a lawyer or not. you are making a strawman where none exist.
“Your name-calling arguments are also not useful and insulting, keep them to yourself.”
as much as this site will allow, i will pursue my right to speech just as you do yours. as for usefulness, i would put it to you that my name calling is more useful if it achieves you either not posting or at least checking out legal basics before you post your asinine statements. i may hurt your feelings, but you would be better for it. your posts just show an ignorance and a lack of respect for the law that is excruciating and that i find even more insulting than silly names. thus, i dub you agony mouse.
nice – my post was erased.
call a few names and you get erased. be dumb as a rock when it comes to the law and post all day.
lowest common denominator here
Zakaria: Is American Innovation A Thing Of The Past?
link to newsweek.com
Anony Mouse:
Thanks for your reasonable discussion – that seems to be a bit lacking on occasion here. I think non-attorneys have a great deal to add to these discussions, as we all have to live with the law regardless of whether we are practitioners or not.
There is no principle of “full disclosure”. There are principles around: disclosing enough so that one of skill in the art can practice the invention, disclosing the best mode of the invention known at the time of filing, and disclosing enough to demonstrate that the inventor had possession of the inventive idea at the time of filing. Therefore, around the idea of specific optimizations for specific hardware, which you rightly indicate will not be included if specific code is not listed, the question will be whether those optimizations are part of the invention and whether they would otherwise be known to one of skill in the art. If someone invents an algorithm to do X, and speed optimizations are Y, then Y is not part of X and need not be disclosed. Of course, there could be an argument whether “Y” is part of the best mode, but that would be difficult to make stick if Y did not affect the claimed operations of X – and further that’s not a 101 argument anyway and would belong in a different discussion.
There is no general principle of law stating that which is covered by one area of law cannot be covered by another. For example, an idea can be patentable and amenable to trade secret protection. Some aspects are precluded from patent and trademark at the same time, because patents must be useful and trademarked aspects must be useless. However, it’s not automatic that the availability of one form of protection blocks other forms of protection. There is preclusion on some areas of the law (e.g. Federal law specifically directed to an issue often pre-empts state law) but it’s not a general principle.
In your question of whether you can infringe such a patent by thinking about it – no. Thoughts in your head are not instructions on a computer readable medium being executed by a computer.
Dear “6”
Can we please agree that software is an idea, an immaterial concept?
Note that “Red Monkey” have shown how the idea of software becomes a material thing and is included into patent claims:
“I claim a disk having encoded thereon some software which, when executed by a computer, causes it to do X, Y, and Z.”
This is technically correct, but my objection is that the full disclosure of the software structure in the patent is unrealistic and unenforceable.
On the other hand “Night Writer Patent Attorney” noted:
“Software is a method for transforming information.”
This is also remarkably true.
But I wonder if such criterion is acceptable for patentability, i.e. before software all methods were about transforming material, and in this sentence the transformation is applied on immaterial thing (going through material mechanisms, which would be unspecified/generic if patent includes software only claims).
More concretely, it means that I may apply such method in my own head, and if such patent is allowed, then I may infringe such patent by just thinking about it. Any objections?
hindsight from the future,
Here is my last message for you (feel free to ignore my future posts):
I never claimed that patent law contradicts copyright law (please stop putting your words into others mouths).
I wrote this:
“My thesis is that software and/or software embedding should not be allowed to be patented because it contradicts to the principles of full disclosure or conflict with copyright laws.”
I even enumerated how.
Note that one of the pro-patent-person posted here that patent law is about protecting the innovations not covered by copyright. So I assume that if the innovation is covered by copyright, then patent protection for the same thing would be at least superfluous if not contradicting to the purpose of the patent law.
Your wavings about my ignorance are empty, please be specific.
If your point is that only lawyers can understand (patent) laws, them I am not falling for such obvious FUD tactics.
Your name-calling arguments are also not useful and insulting, keep them to yourself.
“conflict with copyright laws”
anony mouse – you have already admitted that you know crap about law and yet you still want to talk about law. you keep posting crap – patent law does not conflict with copyright law. learn the basics before you post. your ignorance is excruciating. you should sign your post as agony mouse
…equally valid (IANAL) thus such discussion leads to nowhere – no duh – because you dont unerstand the legal side and you keep posting arguments that are legally invalid and never understand why.
for a smart person you keep making the same dumb mistskes.
About the Tinker Toy example. The Tinker Toy system as a platform may be patentable on it’s own, but I don’t think constructs/configurations of Tinker Toy alone should be allowed to be patented, because of the same reasons (I discuss them below in light of disk structure and dedicated hardware).
My thesis is that software and/or software embedding should not be allowed to be patented because it contradicts to the principles of full disclosure or conflict with copyright laws:
1) abstract description of software (flow charts etc) is not precise and lack details which are crucial in order the solution to be reproducible (and hence usable by others) and hence cannot be treated as full disclosure. Anyone familiar with software knows that every bit of implementation matters and if you change just one bit — you may get a completely different behavior.
2) literal software description (like source code) are texts covered by copyright (please correct me if I am wrong).
Note, that I don’t have any objections to claims of the type “device consists of disk+XXX and disk is imprinted with software” as long as the claim does not include the software structure — the innovation in this case is somewhere in the hardware.
You may claim that the software implements some peculiar mechanics of physics/chemistry/whatever that concerns a particular application/function on the real substance, but then such invention qualifies as a patent for that real substance or its properties, but not the software. At least this is what is useful. Software itself without executing hardware is not useful, agree?
Back to Tinker Toys example. Some software is possible to compile for both: generic computing device and into a dedicated hardware. It’s not easy and it is not possible to do just with any software (e.g. you cannot compile Office spreadsheets for FPGA, even though FPGA is already quite generic). Apart from this technical detail, the main objection is that there are specific reasons why one would want to compile into hardware directly, because it is not so easy as with generics. Very common reason is the speed of execution, other reasons may be special interface with the world (new type of sensor/actuator) — and for those qualitative differences you simply cannot claim that the system of software+generic_CPU is no different from dedicated hardware. Otherwise why bother with such hard problem or direct compilation into hardware?
Direct compilation into hardware is in the area of state-of-the-art, its been for quite a while now and it will probably remain so. I believe this is where the real innovation come into play.
If not for such innovation, we would use Tinker Toys or other generic harware to implement everything and anything.
Overall, I think there are technical objections and supporting claims on both sides and they seem equally valid (IANAL) thus such discussion leads to nowhere (we get incoherent picture and contradicting claims).
Another thesis is that it’s the economical perspective that should be weighted most — this may also give some quantitave answers on where patent system needs to be improved. It seems that for sofware patents (if allowed) the enrollment should be easier and protection duration must be comparative with production and lifetime cycles, and here I find another objection: the evolution of software is so rapid that no patent system can catchup with it (because of vast availability and extremely short product cycles).
You cannot put a lawyer for every computer user, can you? In open source world this is exactly the situation (every user is contributing: some/minority by direct development, and others/majority by testing and testing alone takes at least 1/2 of the whole development effort de-facto, which is not negligible and even dumbest user effort is not negligible, this is acknowledged even by Microsoft, see their “shared source” initiatives).
All this leads to even deeper social problems: lawyers don’t innovate in software but they keep themselves in software evolution loop anyway. Conspiracy theory? May be, may be not, but evidence tend to support it (patent trolls, defensive patent portfolios).
To iPod/iPhone fans: what is so innovative about it? I see only the multi-touch user interface as novel. What is novel about this interface? Well, it’s the hardware: the multi-touch sensor. The software side are just drivers like any other device driver or any software. The rest of the software is nothing new, except for the application interface and for some reason application interfaces are not patentable, go look up Xerox/Apple attempt to patent windowing system. Please correct me if I am wrong.
“Let me know, your Google or connected to VCs who will though money at you or are rich so can big, market and commercialize on your own. Without a patent to protect my innovation, anyone can steal it and bury me. How is that fair?”
I just read that Microsft has patented a version of sudo, which is patently absurd. When a big company wants to steal your innovation, they do it by claiming a patent.
Red Monkey:
I limited it to electrical computers using a binary representation only to make it simple — the same principle applies whether the computer is a human w/ pencil and paper, an electronic computer, a mechanical computer, a chemical computer, a light-based computer, or whatever. Which symbols are used to represent what data is completely arbitrary, and so is the method of conducting the actual computing.
Thus, the only possible connections between different representations of the same algorithm are logical, not physical.
6
No way, I’m not that crazy!
MM
I’d just rather claims die on 102/103, not 101. Just seems like 101 is so lame.
Mike
That doesn’t really prove an algorithm has no physical structure. It just means its projection on different instruction spaces looks different.
“But can you actually prove that an algorithm has no physical structure? Be careful, that’s proving a negative. ”
Sure, that’s easy. Algorithms are information in the memory of a general purpose computer. A general purpose computer can represent information in any way that it wants. But let’s assume, for simplicity, that they all use binary information, and represent it with patterns of voltage levels. Any part of the algorithm that represents an instruction to the computer can be different from another representation of the same algorithm, since instruction sets vary. Any part of the algorithm that represents data can be represented by a number, but these numbers have different encodings as well (ASCII vs. EBCDIC, big endian vs. little endian). Thus, any part of the algorithm, whether it is code or data or both, can be represented by different patterns of voltage. The algorithm is the same, but the physical structures of the two representations are not the same at any point.
it’s comforting to think of you keeping close tabs on taxpayer dollars, especially if the rumor is true that you are an examiner.
Tin foil hat suits you well.
RedMonkey: You seem very hung up on the idea of “physical” things.
You’re very hung up on 101, in spite of the fact that you’ve admitted that all software on old computer readable media is anticipated or obvious. What’s that all about?
“You cannot “see” radio waves, but you can detect them with an antenna and amplifier. So you know they exist by their effect on other things. ”
Actually, I surmise, or perhaps presume that they exist. I don’t “know” they exist. At least based upon the general criteria you just put forward.
“In the same way, perhaps we are surrounded by clouds of invisible “logicles” that have hitherto been undetectable, until the computer was invented. The pattern of bumps on a CD somehow “attracts” these logicles and arranges them into “logical structures” in much the same way magnets arrange iron filings. Computers can sense these, and even better, they can act upon them. ”
Put it in your argument and I just won the appeal 🙂
OK, how about this far fetched idea.
You cannot “see” radio waves, but you can detect them with an antenna and amplifier. So you know they exist by their effect on other things.
In the same way, perhaps we are surrounded by clouds of invisible “logicles” that have hitherto been undetectable, until the computer was invented. The pattern of bumps on a CD somehow “attracts” these logicles and arranges them into “logical structures” in much the same way magnets arrange iron filings. Computers can sense these, and even better, they can act upon them.
I know this sounds far fetched to us. But to a 12th century monk, the idea that there are invisible radio waves all around us must have sounded equally crazy.
Everything about software and computers seems consistent with this physical model.
The logicle is like a neutrino: no mass, no charge, but strangely attracted to smart people, who shed them like dandruff as they walk around. Certain parts of the world are like logicle deserts. The area around Alexandria is particularly notable for its lack of logicle precipitation.
As noted above, there is, however, an antiparticle called the “illogicle,” or “illogicon”, which is prevalent you-know-where.
(note: idea inspired in part by the concept of “dust” in Philip Pullman’s “Golden Compass” books.)
there are definitely illogicons floating around, some take the form of monkeys wearning glasses.
“which is the medium plus certain encoded instructions. ”
Actually it is just the medium. It always will be. Argue differently and I will get you for mixing stat classes. Algorithms are processes.
“But if you were to show these CD bumps to him, he wouldn’t have any idea what they do.”
Sure he would, they are “read by a computer” just the same as the bumps on your device.
“So how would drawings help him?”
He would know specifically what the structure is. And as an aside, he would furthermore know at least one of the specific structures that he will be liable to infringe the patent if he makes.
Bottom line is, my argument is: structure, structure, structure.
“”Structure” is a genus, I gave you a species. ”
No, you gave me a sister genus.
“You seem very hung up on the idea of “physical” things.”
I know, it’s because of this little thing called “the law” 🙁
“But can you actually prove that an algorithm has no physical structure? ”
Why bother? You’re not going to argue otherwise.
“How do you know there aren’t little “logicons” flying around that are just waiting for someone to invent a “logicometer” to detect? ”
Why should I care? You’re not going to argue that.
“In any event that is besides the point. If you say that the algorithm is your invention I will nail you to the cross for attempting to patent all uses of the algorithm (benson). You better stick to the medium being your invention. ”
Nope, that is the point. You said a phosita would need these bumps to understand the invention, which is the medium plus certain encoded instructions. But if you were to show these CD bumps to him, he wouldn’t have any idea what they do. So how would drawings help him?
“I’m asking for the structure, not the “logical structure”. Don’t mince words with me.”
“Structure” is a genus, I gave you a species.
You seem very hung up on the idea of “physical” things. But can you actually prove that an algorithm has no physical structure? Be careful, that’s proving a negative. At any time in the past there were always physical things that nobody could detect. Can you prove that we’ve discovered every physical thing there is? How do you know there aren’t little “logicons” flying around that are just waiting for someone to invent a “logicometer” to detect?
MM: “I’m glad we got that out of the way. Now we can talk about how important it is for investors and inventors to be able to own broad rights to computer-implemented concepts after Congress spent a great deal of time and taxpayer money to create special copyright laws protecting these same people.”
Like I said, how can you converse with people who lack basic critical thinking ability?
I guess if you can’t understand the difference between fixed expression and functionality, then this makes sense. This might also make sense you one thinks that creating source code from a design document or blueprint is difficult.
Oh, the states have spent much taxpayer money on building a body of tradesecret law. Someone can form chemicals using a new and useful process and just keep that process secret _forever_ (plus a day). Patents for chemical processes/methods only waste the good taxpayer’s dollars that have been spent on tradesecret laws.
Oh, and who needs patents when they can get a trademark, also of possible infinite duration. Go buy “GoreTex” clothing. That patent expired long ago, yet “GoreTex” is still made and costs more than “waterproof breatheable nylon”. Those folks never needed a patent; the Trademark was sufficient.
But Malcolm, it’s comforting to think of you keeping close tabs on taxpayer dollars, especially if the rumor is true that you are an examiner.
Here’s some logic that’s valid in the Malcolm-verse. Most patent applicants are taxpayers. Applicants pay the PTO fees. The PTO spends those fees. Conclusion: the PTO spends the money of taxpayers.
“You’re splitting hairs. Let’s say there is no such thing as software. You wave a wand at the processor and it is somehow configured in a way that it has new and useful propeties. It behaves in observable predictable ways to do those useful things. Throw away the wand and leave the processor plugged in forever. Where’s the “software”? Is the processor useful without the “software”?”
Do we get power? Do we also get the ability to use the processor any way which we please? If yes, yes, then yes, yes.
“Why? Can you point to some computer science text that explains how an algorithm works by reference to a pattern of bumps on a disk?”
Yes. I have one on my shelf at home.
In any event that is besides the point. If you say that the algorithm is your invention I will nail you to the cross for attempting to patent all uses of the algorithm (benson). You better stick to the medium being your invention.
“If you showed such a pattern to a PHOSITA, would he really be able to understand it?”
He would understand what the invention, aka the medium, is. In fact, he would have a crystal clear view of what it is.
“Easy. He’d read the claims. ”
What the invention is is sometimes buried within the claims. For instance, here we have a case where someone has described a medium simply by describing the effects that something “encoded upon it” has on another machine. What is the medium, and what specifically, is its structure?
“Even easier. Just look at the flow charts and block diagrams. That will show the logical structure. Then read the specification. Juries do that all the time. If they can understand it, so can you. ”
Flow charts and diagrams are the structure of the medium? I have never seen such a flow chart or diagram showing such. But if you have a flow chart that does then that’s good. I can’t wait to see it.
“That will show the logical structure.”
I’m asking for the structure, not the “logical structure”. Don’t mince words with me.
“Then read the specification. Juries do that all the time. If they can understand it, so can you. ”
No, they don’t ever “understand it”, you simply fool them into thinking that they “understand it”. They’re completely ignorant of what the structure is in 100% of the cases I’d wager. There might be one or two cases that have happened where they weren’t ignorant of this, but the knowledge they had didn’t come from a flow chart, a diagram, or knowledge of the “logical structure”.
By the by, I missed the part where you were responding to where I “established” that my reference’s cd was the same as yours.
Anony Mouse,
Sorry if this rambles, but I’ve got limited time for this…
“I am not being dishonest about the science-part. I just read that one cannot patent an equation, that’s all. Thanks for pointing it out. As for computer science/engineering/arts — it is many faceted discipline that has ties nearly with all disciplines, including poetry (e.g. programming language design) and there are fundamental theories that are specific just to science of computing, but that is irrelevant here.”
I agree. No patenting equations per se. Re the poetry, I think that you allude to creativity in general. I agree, this is something we find in all scientific endeavors. But this is just the sort of thing that leads to my position. Every now and then someone comes up with some software ideas that are like the Raven.. they’re new, creative, unobvious, all peers are amazed, and so on. It’s just that you can do a lot of real world useful stuff with the software. Anyway, similarities to poetry or other liberal arts do not negate the “hard science” traits of computer science, which predominate. Don’t most CS degrees require a substantial amount of math coursework?…
“The “[fill in the blank]” hypothetical example above works for computing machinery but does not work for software, because software itself is inanimate, it’s the executor/processor/hardware that moves the electrons. May I say that software without hardware/executing_platform is useless?
Software cannot move the electrons by itself, that’s for sure.”
You’re splitting hairs. Let’s say there is no such thing as software. You wave a wand at the processor and it is somehow configured in a way that it has new and useful propeties. It behaves in observable predictable ways to do those useful things. Throw away the wand and leave the processor plugged in forever. Where’s the “software”? Is the processor useful without the “software”?
Try looking at it this way. Suppose you found a machine (it’s a programmed computer, but we don’t know that). You observe it and test it until you figure out what it does and how. Now you want to publish a paper about the machine. Would you describe a bunch of gates and the low-level ways they work together? No. It would be meaningless not to mention difficult. We would describe the behavior of the machine in a way that is meaningful to people. That description would sound like an algorithm or math or whatever, but that would not mean that the processor is per se “math” etc. Math and abstract language is how we describe what the processor does.
And so with a patent claim. People configure processors at a high level. That’s where the human activity occurs to make new and useful processors (perhaps temporary). Think about the work that goes into designing a new algorithm. You don’t worry about gates or buses or electrons, you deal in math-like abstractions and models that you assume a machine can implement. You use high-level “language” (pseudo code, real code, a useful subset of English verbs, etc.) to both design and to describe what you’ve created. You may use a high-level programming language to formalize your creation. But when you configure the processor, you’ve created a real machine with real world possibilities. The machine happens to have characteristics that can be described with your code or with English. A patent claim may borrow from that language you’ve used because that’s the language of that technology; that’s the level of abstraction that people work with and create (and the level at which that work would be imitated). But if the patent claim is to a real world implementation, a real machine or a real machine-implementation of your algorithm, then we shouldn’t have a problem. The algorithm/math/TuringMachine/blablabla per se is not patented. A machine or machine-performed process that has properties described in the claim is what is claimed. Your peers can still study the algorithm, they can discuss it in papers and lectures. They can write it on paper and work with it, etc. The can “run” it in their mind. Practically, they can code it and test it in private without anyone knowing in order to learn (though this might be technically infringement, consider it de facto “fair use”). The algorithm per se has not been patented.
“…I would like to discuss aspect of patenting pure software solution running on general purpose computer. Perhaps very specific software for starters: just open source software (perhaps I could generalize later).”
“So you say patents are supposed to encourage the useful arts. This is their purpose, and without purpose the law should not be applicable?”
Yes, but the nature of the law is that it is a system. It’s language in action. You build this system as a set of rules in human language with the intention of accomplishing a goal such as encouraging innovation or preventing financial fraud. Now being a system performed by human minds according to human language, the system is imperfect. Some desired outcomes don’t happen, and some undesired outcomes do. So you can’t just point to a single or few examples of the law not working according to its design and say it must be disposed.
Opensource is only a small piece of the software world. If patents are a hindrance to the opensource movement, that alone is not sufficient reason to dispose of the software patent system.
“The open source community say it does not work for open source software and they give you the reasons on how it breaks down:
1) patents require full disclosure of the invention so that it would not be lost and other would get benefit. Open source software is by definition open and disclosed and often you may get any version of it, so there are no benefits here. … [I don’t understand the rest of this part]”
This is not true. The value of software is not only in the source code. There can be great value in the design of that software; the ideas behind it.
“2) patents grant unlimited monopoly over the technology but limited in time (please correct me if I am wrong). Again, this goes against open source software, because everybody is encouraged to try the software instead of restraining from.”
This goes agains all software, whether open source or not. It doesn’t help us understand if patents are a net pro or con for the public, which uses much more commercial software than opensource software.
“3) the patent filing procedure takes a long time, longer than the software production cycle.”
Right. I have a thought for you on this you might not have read before. The nature of software is that it is abstract. It is very easy to describe software in a way that is completely untied to anything in the real world. I have read patent claims where, though the description was for something concrete and spefific and reasonable, the claims were so obtuse and abstract that you couldn’t read them and know what they meant when compared to something in the real world.
In software, context is everything. An advance usually only makes sense with reference to or described relative to something that already exists. So I would argue that most _valid_ software-type claims have some concrete features or limitations that fix them in time. That by necessity starts to limit how far in the future these claims will reach. In a few years there will be new developments, new terminilogy, new context. Chances are, my valid claims won’t be very relevant. Go read some software patents issued 10 years ago. A large portion are irrelevant to the state of software today. Basically, valid software patents often inherently have a limited life span, though I think patent term is a legitimate way to re-level the patent cost-benefit balance, if needed.
“5) with software, just about anyone can be an inventor, but only the big companies can afford the patent system.”
There’s a bit of truth to this. I think it’s why small inventors get a 50% discount. The flip side is that if you’re “small”, you’re also not likely to be accused of infringement.
“so how does the patent system encourages software arts?”
“If we would take a historical perspective, then patent system is very old compared with the software technology and especially open source. And this technology is radically different from what we had before (in terms of production cycles, distribution costs and lifetime).
So different conclusions can be drawn from here, I would not speculate.”
The patent system is not fixed in stone. It changes all the time. PatentSystem(1950) != PatentSystem(2010).
“PHOSITA does need them to understand the invention.”
Why? Can you point to some computer science text that explains how an algorithm works by reference to a pattern of bumps on a disk?
If you showed such a pattern to a PHOSITA, would he really be able to understand it?
“I have to wonder how poshita would divine what the invention was either. ”
Easy. He’d read the claims. That’s what you should do too.
“I especially don’t understand how they’d know what the structure of the invention was. ”
Even easier. Just look at the flow charts and block diagrams. That will show the logical structure. Then read the specification. Juries do that all the time. If they can understand it, so can you.
“What prevented Edison and others from filing patents on phonographs that differed only in the music content?”
I don’t know what section 101 looked like back
then, or if there even was one.
“Do you believe that lawyers in Edison’s time weren’t as creative as they are now?”
Do I seem old enough to know?
“Or is it that people now are more greedy than Edison?”
I don’t know how greedy he was. But he
couldn’t have been that greedy or he
would have been in some other line
of business, like his contemporaries
Rockefeller, and JP Morgan.
“Second, why isn’t all software claimed on a generic computer-readable medium per se obvious or anticipated according to your theory above?”
Well, if it is, then at least
it got past 101. That’s all I
was pushing for. Once it’s past
that it’s on its own.
I don’t f around with drawings much anymore, but you’ll have a good ol time with 37 CFR 1.81(c) coupled if I feel like it, with 37 CFR 1.83(a) and maybe (b) won’t you?
Well, I am leaving now. MM you can re-start your troll nonsense. I’ll smack you down on Monday.
“All that’s left are the parasites.”
When that happens, do some of the parasites go ahead and make some successful products, then die off, etc with a neverending pool of parasites to replace the prasites that go rogue and create a successful product?
If so, why should I be against this model?
“So copyright does not offer enough protection for people to bear the expense to design and develop and manufacture and advertise and enter the market, ”
Dear heart, iPods are a poor example, you know good and well they could pay to have that software created a thousand times over and still be able to enter the market with ease.
“Drawings are only needed if a PHOSITA would need them to understand the invention. ”
Poshita does need them to understand the invention. What, specifically, is this structure which functions as you say it does? You’ve only described it functionally. How can they know what the structure is without a diagram or at least a detailed description of the article in the WD?
I haven’t been able to understand what specifically was the invention sought to be patented in any B claim cases that I’ve ever read, and I have to wonder how poshita would divine what the invention was either. I especially don’t understand how they’d know what the structure of the invention was. Perhaps you could explain to me how they’d know? Good luck.
I just got back from another alternate universe that had only copyright protection for software. Again, no iPod. Apparently, if you just write from scratch software that performs in exactly the same way, but do not actually copy the software, there is no copyright infringement. Who knew?
So copyright does not offer enough protection for people to bear the expense to design and develop and manufacture and advertise and enter the market, when people can just make a product that functions in the exact same way without penalty. Then everyone just sits around waiting for someone else to make a successful product that has a software component, and they make one exactly like it but less expensive because they don’t have to recoup design and development costs. The ones that do take risks and make new products, some of which fail, are not as profitable as the do nothing no risk takers, so they fold. All that’s left are the parasites.
“I just got back form a parallel universe that is exactly like ours except no software patents. They didn’t have the iPod.”
HAHAHAHAHHA lololol. Did they have such advanced technology that iPods were irrelevant?
“How would you establish that your CD is the same as mine?”
So far as I’m aware the only requirement for my cd to be “the same” as yours is that it has “encoded thereon some software which, when executed by a computer, causes it to do X, Y, and Z”. My cd does just that on a specific machine (aka one programmed to do xyz when it recieves the information from my disk, just like yours).
There isn’t anything more to “establish”.
“I didn’t claim a CD with 1 0 encoded thereon did I?”
So far as I can see you did. Perhaps you can explain how what you claimed is “different”. Good luck.
“Don’t project your motives onto other people, 6.”
LOLOL. Right. Nice deflection.
Run away because you are wrong and cannot play.
Just a shameful troll, MM.
a supposed viewpoint that software patents are necessary for software to advance. No one on this forum has ever suggested such a thing.
I’m glad we got that out of the way. Now we can talk about how important it is for investors and inventors to be able to own broad rights to computer-implemented concepts after Congress spent a great deal of time and taxpayer money to create special copyright laws protecting these same people.
So, MM, up to your ole nonsense that a phonograph is the same as a computer?
New functionality with a new phonograph? Really!
Please explain that functionality.
Oh no, MM, will run as he always he does. Come MM let’s play.
Drawings are only needed if a PHOSITA would need them to understand the invention. Lots of chemical cases don’t have drawings. I don’t see how a drawing of a disk would help a software engineer anymore than little diagrams of atoms would help a chemist.
How would you establish that your CD is the same as mine? I didn’t claim a CD with 1 0 encoded thereon did I?
I just got back form a parallel universe that is exactly like ours except no software patents. They didn’t have the iPod.
Sorry, do you mean the one asking what would happen to a claim for roll-2 if prior art roll-1 differed only in the music encoded?
I would expect a rejection under 103, but not under 101.
First of all, that wasn’t my question. My question was what prevented Edison and others from filing patents on phonographs that differed only in the music content? After all, each piece of music imparts a new functionality to the phonograph player. Do you believe that lawyers in Edison’s time weren’t as creative as they are now? Or is it that people now are more greedy than Edison?
Second, why isn’t all software claimed on a generic computer-readable medium per se obvious or anticipated according to your theory above?
“Those popular fads are cited to support the false premise that without software patents we’d all be sitting around a fire in a cave and carving bones with sharp rocks.”
Here’s another one of the fallacies that for some reason is constantly repeated by this person. How is it possible to discuss with people who don’t seem to grasp even the basics of critical thinking and logic?
Would chemistry still be practiced if there were no patents? In fact, did the entire field of chemistry arise without patents? Yes, of course. Same with modern biology. If we struck all patent laws off the books today, would Genentech stop developing drugs? No. Would materials engineers all retire? No. If there were no patents on mechanical devices, would Toyota stop trying to find new ways to build better cars? No. In fact, the vast vast majority of activity in all patent-eligible subjects involve just routine engineering, including software. We all know this. No technical field’s emergence or continued existence is dependent on patents.
Would software be developed without patents? Obviously yes. Mooney fabricates when he says that pro-patent people argue that patents are necessary for the advance of software or are somehow the catalyst for all software advances. Mooney mischaracterizes pro-patent viewpoints as somehow suggesting that without software patents we’d all revert to amoeba. He twists the viewpoint that patents have a proper role into a supposed viewpoint that software patents are necessary for software to advance. No one on this forum has ever suggested such a thing.
At best, people here have argued that some investment occurs in part because of the prospect for ownership (in the form of patents). Some have argued that it is fair for inventors to own certain software inventions. Some have argued that the problems of software patents are overblown or unproven. But no one has made the argument that Mooney presents, and it seems he does this either because he is eager to discredit or because he just sees things that aren’t really there.
>>How much did they promise you?
Don’t project your motives onto other people, 6.
“Actually, I figured all this out in law school when I was paying the money.”
How much did they promise you?
“”I claim a disk having encoded thereon some software which, when executed by a computer, causes it to do X, Y, and Z.”
And then I object to your drawings for not drawing the structure since it is imperative that I know what the structure is in order to understand the invention.
And I also drop a reference with a cd with 1 0 encoded thereon as a 102. You made the functionality depend on the functionality of the computer as opposed to strictly the functionality of the disk.
I cannot wait to get more B claims.
Malcolm
Sorry, do you mean the one asking what would happen to a claim for roll-2 if prior art roll-1 differed only in the music encoded?
I would expect a rejection under 103, but not under 101.
Lionel: By eliminating a whole class of subject matter you throw the baby out with the bathwater.
My point is that in the real world this “baby” has a billion identical twins and you’ll never miss the one you threw out.
Anony Mouse:
You have to answer my Tinker Toy hypothetical before I can attempt to answer your question. Why is a machine useful when the bits and logic operations are created in explicit hardware (like the Tinker Toy computer) but not when the bits and logic are created on a computer readable medium? If your argument is that the Tinker Toy machine is not eligible for patent, then we may disagree but at least you are being logically consistent. If you insist that the Tinker Toy computer is eligible for patent, but the software is not, then I remain unsatisfied with your argument (which I’m sure concerns you greatly 😛 ).
RedMonkey: Software is not one of the four categories in 101. But a disk is.
Again, please answer the question in my 11:54 am comment.
Anony Mouse
I think impartial means applying the rule the same way to everybody. Deciding what the rule should be in the first place is different. That second part is what we are struggling with.
Courts do rely on experts when interpreting the law, but each side has one and they say different things. So a judge has to figure out who to believe.
You get innovation status if the thing you invented differs from the prior art in a non-obvious way. This is supposed to be objective, but it’s hard to make it so.
RedMonkey: A wax cylinder having undulating grooves for causing a needle to vibrate sounds like an article of manufacture under 101. As for whether it passes 102/103 we would rely on the wisdom of the examining corps.
Yes, I know this. How about responding to my comment? Maybe try reading it again because you seem to have completely misunderstood it.
Red Monkey,
Sure nobody is perfect. But justice very much depend on being impartial, thus if we have an objective tool available, then it’s a good idea to use it. No? Even courts rely on expert whiteness’s…
I don’t know the details about Alappat,
but I would not give “innovation” status to a special purpose hardware that can be emulated by software with generic hardware (if that’s provided as prior art).
I am probably hitting on principles of what “innovative enough” means…
Software is a method for transforming information.
“Formally, you may say that the material embedding of software causes the hardware to spin in some way, but not the software (the idea!) itself.”
Exactly. That’s why when you try to claim software, you always say something like
“I claim a disk having encoded thereon some software which, when executed by a computer, causes it to do X, Y, and Z.
You cannot say
“I claim software which when executed by a computer causes it to do X, Y, and Z.”
Software is not one of the four categories in 101. But a disk is.
Anonymouse
I think the Court in Alappat said that a general purpose computer programmed to do X becomes “in effect” a new machine. A lot of people argue about the words “in effect”, which to some means “not really, but we’ll pretend.”
To the extent that the Court in Alappat was wrong, it wouldn’t be the first time law was inconsistent with reality. This isn’t a criticism of the law though. The purpose of law is to help people resolve disputes. It is not there to describe reality. That’s why we have science (including computer science).
SteveW,
Software is an information, an idea, a concept. Hardware is made of material.
Formally, you may say that the material embedding of software causes the hardware to spin in some way, but not the software (the idea!) itself.
As I said before, many are confused of simple use-mention error.
If software is not an idea (not a method if you like), so what are we trying to patent?
Night Writer Patent Attorney and Trilithon,
on Nov 12, 2009 at 10:39 AM, “6” made a reference to Alappat case, specifically about “in effect” part.
In my humble opinion, the idea is that if you take two systems software+generic-CPU and specialized-hardware functionaly doing the very same thing — these systems are different from perspective of a method.
The same principle is applied in pharmacy: one company develops revolutionary product (e.g. human insulin), files for patent and another company develops another drug for the same treatment/function (e.g. human insulin-like, in concrete case take GLP) — it’s a different drug and patent does not apply.
So dedicated hardware method is different than software+generic-CPU.
It would be nice to find a precendent, but the software history is not that big, or is it?
Anony Mouse:
Pirates are going bananas. But the other thing is that piracy is not required. Microsoft Office and Windows are hardly pirated technologies, but they are copied.
Of course the software causes the hardware to execute. I could use your argument to say that a wrench doesn’t turn a bolt:
1) Assertion: The wrench turns the bolt.
2) Falsification 1: If you put the wrench on a different, wrong-sized bolt, the bolt will not turn.
3) Falsification 2: That wrench does not change the physical specifications of the bolt to enhance the capabilities of the bolt.
4) Therefore, the wrench does not turn the bolt.
Surely that doesn’t work.
Malcolm
I don’t know John Edison. I’ve hear of Thomas. I don’t think he tried to patent his cylinders. Maybe he figured he’d make more money on talking machines than on wax cylinders.
A wax cylinder having undulating grooves for causing a needle to vibrate sounds like an article of manufacture under 101. As for whether it passes 102/103 we would rely on the wisdom of the examining corps.
>>Nobody’s bamboozled, anony mouse. Those >>popular fads are cited to support the false >>premise that without software patents we’d all >>be sitting around a fire in a cave and carving >>bones with sharp rocks.
The strawman shuffle.
6: >>before it became that
Actually, I figured all this out in law school when I was paying the money.
MM where was that argument that you said you could make that mathematical algorithms didn’t save lives?
Shuffled on to your next diatribe have you?
You’ve heard of John Edison?
That comment was posted pre-coffee. Should be “Tom Edison.” LOL.
I’m curious NWPA, how much money did they have to pay you before it became that?
I also don’t know why so many people are bamboozled by iPhone, twitter, youtube or other software — these are just new implementations of old ideas, and they aren’t even new in software world
Nobody’s bamboozled, anony mouse. Those popular fads are cited to support the false premise that without software patents we’d all be sitting around a fire in a cave and carving bones with sharp rocks.
And let’s stop these ridiculous arguments about software. CPU + software or hardwired computer.
They are the same. Software + CPU just makes the machine more flexible and easier to build.
That’s it. The anti-software arguments are in effect penalizing the innovation of the CPU + software.
No matter what yapping noises you make it is a machine. And a different machine with the software. A machine that transforms information. Simple.