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| Authored by: Anonymous on Tuesday, June 12 2012 @ 11:13 AM EDT |
It doesn't matter whether its obvious how to tell the computer to do something
or not. It has the capability -- all computers have, since the day the first
one was built (subject only to the resource limitations of finite memory and
finite execution time).
Look at it this way: Pen and paper is a medium for writing down little markings
that represent abstract symbols (letters, numbers, words). I can write a
fantastic new novel, which might even be interesting to many people, but it
doesn't deserve patent protection.
I can even write a new instruction manual (e.g. a scientific textbook, or a
research paper) explaining how people can do some newly-discovered thing that
nobody knew how to do before (making aluminum, or something). Does my
instruction manual deserve a patent? Of course not. It gets copyright
protection, for my creative "expression" of my ideas, but that's it.
We certainly wouldn't grant a patent covering not only my instruction manual,
but any other instruction manual expressing a similar idea.
And yet, that's exactly what software patents are.
Software is just long instruction manuals, written down in a precise language so
that a very literal-minded computer can follow the instructions. "The
program" is an abstract thing (the same way a math formula is an abstract
thing, or "a short story" is an abstract thing). A representation of
the program, written down on paper or encoded in a computer's RAM with
electrical symbols, is not the program itself. The program itself is a purely
abstract mathematical construct. I can already get copyright protection for my
newly-expressed programming ideas when I write down a new program (fixing it in
a tangible medium). And my copyright does not prevent other programmers from
using the same ideas. I don't want or deserve, to get patent protection too --
that DOES prevent other programmers from using the same ideas, or (far more
likely) puts them at risk of huge legal woes, because they unknowingly used an
idea that I was granted a software patent on.
Every working programmer "infringes" dozens, *hundreds* of software
patents *every single week* that they work. Of course the patents are all
garbage, none of them should exist. And the "infringements" are
usually not discovered and usually not prosecuted. But make no mistake -- all
software developers live with this spectre of potential legal massacre hanging
over their heads, like a Sword of Damocles.
We can't possibly read or understand all of the software patents that exist --
they issue them faster than we could read them. When we do read them, we can
barely work out what they are supposed to mean, anyway. They are so broad and
vague and useless, that we don't learn anything from reading them (except that
certain areas of mathematics are potentially encumbered by them, and are now too
dangerous to use, even though they were already in wide use for decades).
Reading them also puts us at risk of triple liability for intentional
infringement. Because of this, every software company I've worked for over the
past 15 years had an official or unofficial policy that developers were NOT
supposed to ever look at patents. It was too dangerous! And pointless, to
boot. When we need to solve problems, we think about them and apply our
knowledge and experience and arrive at obvious solutions. This is far easier
and quicker than learning from reading patents, anyway.
All too frequently, those obvious solutions later turn out to have been patented
by someone else.[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]
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| Authored by: Anonymous on Tuesday, June 12 2012 @ 11:27 AM EDT |
You really don't get it, do you?
The original element in the cancer cure is how to mix the chemicals -- a
CHEMICAL process, which is patentable.
The original element in the software is MATHEMATICS, which is NOT PATENTABLE.
I see later on that you want to patent mathematics. You think row reduction
should be patentable, and Newton's method, and Euclid's method, and the proof of
the four-color theorem, and Buchberger's algorithm, and the Sieve of
Eratosthenes, and the quadratic formula.
Well, that's contrary to the entire history of the patent system and I don't
know why you want to wreck mathematics, but at least you're honest about it.[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]
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