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| Authored by: Ian Al on Sunday, April 22 2012 @ 05:34 AM EDT |
I read your linked comment and I disagree. My disagreement will, of course, take
several pages and I will give the detail later.
I did, indeed, mean to say that the SSO in libraries cannot be patented. That
was in answer to the question put by Judge Alsup:
'Judge Alsup: The copyrightability of the 37 APIs is my call. But I want more
briefing on it. I want you to take a firm position. Could you get a patent on
structure, sequence, and organization (SSO)? Say "yes" or
"no".'
Now to the many pages of my interface argument. Software interfaces do not
exist. They are not real.
#include <stdio.h>
main()
{
printf ("Hello World!n");
}
printf is an interface from stdio.h.
#include <stdio.h>
is not a language construct although it is included in K&R. It is an
instruction to the compiler. Some c compilers can include all the compiler
instructions in the command line invocation of the compiler.
Programmers have an abstract idea or concept of a software interface. It is so
heavily ingrained in their thinking that they see software in that light.
The compiler uses stdio.h as a code library and it uses the text 'printf' to
select from the stdio.h library the code that can be executed to deliver the
display of parameters in the program. I skip over the intermediate phases of
modern compilation.
Once the program is in executable binary, there will be no machine code
instructions that form an 'interface'. Some programmers will know that jumps to
certain positions in memory are jumps to 'interfaces' to hardware. That's just
their rationalisation of the patterns in the binary.
If you write up the 'API' in a book, you reinforce that 'interface' programming
stereotype. It does no harm to good programming, quite the reverse. It does harm
in court when companies decide that they can own the abstract concept of
'interface'.
In my comment I make the point that the API Specification is a book that merely
records what the library functions, do. The book uses the abstract programmers'
concept of 'software interfaces' and this is fine for explaining what the
libraries do. However, if the book does not say what the libraries do, how to
access the functions in the library and how the libraries are organised, it is
worthless.
Any SSO in the API Specification must, by definition, be an exact record of the
SSO in the libraries. If there is protectable SSO creative expression, it has to
be in the libraries and not in the Specification.
You said that it was important to remember that it is the *creative* expression
fixated in a medium that might be protectable by copyright. The SSO is not
*created* in the Specification document, it is *created* in the SSO of the
libraries. To find out whether the SSO in the APIs can be protected by patent or
copyright, you have to identify it fixated in the medium that is the libraries
and not in the, after-the-creation-of-the-APIs, record of what is in the
libraries.stdio.h
---
Regards
Ian Al
Software Patents: It's the disclosed functions in the patent, stupid![ Reply to This | Parent | # ]
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