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| Authored by: Ian Al on Monday, May 21 2012 @ 05:37 AM EDT |
If, by panel, you are referring to cross-bar switches, then you are right and
wrong. There were both electromechanical and SPC controlled cross-bar exchanges
and the SPC exchanges all used computerised lookup of the routing tables (on the
basis of the telephone number symbols) for the selection of outgoing routes. The
signalling system has to transmit the entire dialled number so that the process
can be repeated at each exchange node.
Telephone number mobility and the introduction of direct dialling to mobile
phones did not actually change the lookup requirement. It just introduced
dynamic and semi-dynamic routing algorithms.
On a completely different tack, and in order to mess with your tutorial, I have
had more thoughts on context.
This is a Dr. Sheldon Lee Cooper v. Howard Joel Wolowitz issue. Howard will
explain that software inventions are always in the computer. In the
on-a-computer context there is only the layers of symbology that I described up
to and including the numeric values, symbolised by '1's and '0's which are, in
turn, symbolised by electrical, magnetic and other physical phenomenon including
my personal favourite; dents in a plastic disk.
The context conventions are set by the hardware designers and that includes the
arrangement of bytes of data to symbolise data, memory addresses and processor
instructions. Those are (if I have remembered them all) the only symbols
involved in the execution of code in memory.
Sheldon will explain that computers can only be explained within the context of
theoretical computer science and that any engineering considerations are a
distraction.
He will point to decades of mathematical and computer science books (a
tautological phrase, if ever I wrote one) that demonstrate the use and
manipulation of symbols to represent computer science theory.
The only relevant context for patents is that of the computing machine or
process. Everything else is in the context of abstract ideas which are not
patentable subject matter.
If the resolution of symbolic references are to do with computer science theory
(as with '104 and '520) they are not patentable subject matter. If they are
based on the symbolic conventions of computer machinery, then the later sections
of the Act must be used to further prove patent validity. Or not.
---
Regards
Ian Al
Software Patents: It's the disclosed functions in the patent, stupid![ Reply to This | Parent | # ]
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