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| Authored by: PolR on Tuesday, June 12 2012 @ 07:45 PM EDT |
In some sense hardware and software are equivalent. In some other sense they are
not.
We have a problem similar to the one the printed matter doctrine is meant to
resolve. What do you do with a patent on a printing press configured to print
Shakespeare's Hamlet? Printing presses are patentable but work of literature are
not.
As soon as you see the circuit as something that process symbols instead of
signals you are crossing a line, like seeing a letter instead of a mark of ink
on paper. This line is crossed when you see the transistors as boolean gates
which manipulates bits instead of devices for manipulating voltages.
If I understand Pr Risch correctly he would argue the dividing line is not the
same for software and digital electronics than for works of literature because
of his criterion of practical utility. But I am sure we can find printed
material which is practically useful, like a dictionary or a map. So I am not
sure the practical utility is the sole test here, unless Pr Risch would want
maps and dictionary to be patentable. I wonder what he would say on this.
In another comment Pr Risch has accepted that a procedure for manipulating
symbols with limitations on the meanings of the symbols is not a process when
outside of a computer and it is an abstract technical process when inside the
computer. All these roads leads to non patentability. But I don't he meant to
imply software is abstract, unless he changed his mind in a major way and he
didn't indicate that this is the case. I think the discussion is still hanging
on this point.
[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]
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| Authored by: rebentisch on Friday, June 15 2012 @ 08:11 PM EDT |
The higher the abstraction, the less useful.
The prejudice of the patent system is that abstraction gets more appreciation
than implementation.
In software engineering we also followed the path, the software architect as the
high paid important persons, and the implementation slave, the programmer as the
unimportant person.
Now: Any implementation includes an explicit or implicit abstraction. If you
want to patent that the limiting ressource is patent attorneys, not your
R&D.[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]
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| Authored by: jesse on Saturday, June 16 2012 @ 07:24 AM EDT |
If you're going to be consistent, if you claim that "software is
not
patentable because it's math", then you have to also state that all
boolean
logic that is implemented in digital hardware is not patentable, because
that's
also just math. The two are
equivalent.
Correct.
The digital hardware that
implements the boolean logic IS patentable.
But not the boolean
logic. [ Reply to This | Parent | # ]
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