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| Authored by: Wol on Sunday, June 10 2012 @ 08:27 PM EDT |
It's EASY to define software.
Software can be printed out on paper in source form, can be stored as a number
in a computer, and can be executed by an Arithmetic Logic Unit.
(An Arithmetic Logic Unit can be defined as anything - virtual or real - which
applies true-false logic to numeric input to create numeric output.)
If it doesn't meet all those criteria it isn't software, and if it meets any of
those criteria it can't be patented.
Cheers,
Wol[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]
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| Authored by: Ian Al on Monday, June 11 2012 @ 06:09 AM EDT |
The software patent to which you refer is a set of functions which you and the
patent holder consider best implemented in software (the best mode).
Software is a stored program of instructions that can be entered into computer
memory and executed by the computer processor.
Most 'software patents' apply to a specific dollop of stored program that relies
on other dollops. A well known dollop is the operating system.
The 'patented' software implementing the invented function set is usually
several layers of abstraction from the execution of stored instructions on the
computer's processor.
Take a Java application, for example. Java Source code-> compiled code->
pre-execution processing -> virtual processor -> compilation ->
operating system -> processor. Everything in this chain either generates or
is math algorithms for execution on the computer processor. That's the software
defined. Where's the non-mathematical invention?
The practitioner of the software arts implementing a Java patented invention in
a Java application will have all the other parts on which the invention depends
(the software associated nuts and bolts) pre-built.
We know that the complete compiled program is indirectly executed as an abstract
math algorithm. We know that the ideas that resulted in the code being written
might remotely control, say, a television or the central heating. If the program
is carrying out math algorithms (which it must in order to run on the processor,
according to the mathematicians and computer scientists) what in the math
algorithm is other than an abstract idea in the mind of the programmer, no
matter if it was put there by the words of a patent (unlikely!) or by the
programmer's inventive abstract ideas?
Why should the programmer who has an abstract inventive idea and models that in
a program foreclose on the functions used in the software for any other
programmer?
The broader the patent, the more of the tools of the programmers art are
foreclosed by the patent. Since the original inventor is rarely the patent
owner, that applies to the inventor, as well. He can never again use the
software functions he invented without paying a tithe to the current patent
owner. If it's a broad patent, it might put him out of work because programming
ideas from one person tend to be related.
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Regards
Ian Al
Software Patents: It's the disclosed functions in the patent, stupid![ Reply to This | Parent | # ]
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