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| Authored by: Anonymous on Sunday, June 10 2012 @ 08:17 PM EDT |
What am I missing?
Isn't the a-ha moment an idea?
Are ideas patentable?
If the idea is embodied in software, the software performing the idea is not
novel.
rgds[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]
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| Authored by: pcrooker on Monday, June 11 2012 @ 12:02 AM EDT |
People have inventive, creative thoughts all the time, especially in programming
where there is a crossover between creativity and utility, but these shouldn't
be patentable. But not everyone can think up a kool-aid powered device that
lifts any sized object up to 100,000 tonnes, or a portable device that
vapourises rock or whatever. These would be inventions. Swiping your finger
across a surface to unlock it is not inventive as everyone except Apple agrees.
So how about an inventiveness scale? It should be set very high, as I think most
things now called inventions aren't.
[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]
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| Authored by: Anonymous on Monday, June 11 2012 @ 07:03 AM EDT |
If you compare the example to how the t9 dictionary method works on the old
Nokia style phones. A key is pressed and the dictionary trys to predict the word
you are spelling. The keypress method is irrelevent, it's the same as granting a
patent based on whether you are wearing a hat at the time of operation, the
underlying software is carrying out the task of identifying what is the likely
letter based on the input. It doesn't care what you looked like when you
generated the data/keypress or what organ you used to do it.
Taking it further into the realm of mathematics, try comparing it with a method
of compressing speech called Linear Predictive Coding. Here a mathematical set
of parameters are created to produce a waveform, these parameters are tailored
to change the output waveform based on the data to create a close approximation
of the input stream i.e. it's a mathematical function to try and create the
correct output based on analysis of the previous data. I think you have to agree
the underlying functionality is exactly the same as the idea you thought
patentable.[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]
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| Authored by: 351-4V on Monday, June 11 2012 @ 09:58 AM EDT |
Was it obvious to apply those techniques to
swiped touch keyboards?
I may have misunderstood you but it sounds to me that you are
saying the non-obvious part was ... on a touch keyboard.
... on a touch
keyboard == ... on a computer == ... while wearing a hat (to borrow from another
poster in this thread).[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]
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| Authored by: PJ on Monday, June 11 2012 @ 10:57 AM EDT |
With all due respect, that may be your problem, that
you are trying to fit software in with other things
that are not software. There are unique properties
to software that make it uniquely inappropriate
for patentability. Trying for some overarching
principle will mislead you from that foundation.
The law needs to match reality. There is no point
in passing a law on what Pi should be, because it
is what it is, not that it stopped one group of
legislators from trying to pass such a silly law.
Patent law is out of harmony with reality in that
same way, and that's why programmers find so
much of it frustrating and obvious. If you patent
1 + 1 = 2, you run out of ways to do anything, and
that is what is happening in software. You can't
write anything, literally anything, without violating
someone's patent. If you are successful, that
means you will have to spend $5 million to beat each
patent brought against you, even if you win, and
damages on top of that if you lose.
What kind of economy is that? It's like gerbils,
where you wake up one day and mom ate her baby.[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]
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| Authored by: Anonymous on Monday, June 11 2012 @ 11:48 AM EDT |
was to run ALL POSSIBLE mathematical algorithms.
Go, look up the MATHEMATICAL WORK of the MATHEMATICIANS who invented the general
purpose computer if you want to verify this.
Running ANY mathematical algorithm on a general purpose computer is obvious, and
indeed suggested.
The purpose of peripherals to general purpose computers (and a touch screen is a
peripheral) is to translate input into a mathematical form, and to translate
mathematics into an output form. Doing ABSOLUTELY ANYTHING with the
mathematical form of the input data in the general purpose computer is
*suggested*.
In patent law terms, every combination of pure software (mathematics) with stock
general purpose computers and stock peripeherals was *suggested* to the Person
Having Ordinary Skill In The Art (of programming) by the designers of the
computers and the peripherals. It is *all* obvious.
The only place where there is non-obvious work is the mathematics, the pure
software programming, and *that's not patentable*.
This might allow the rubber-curing patent to succeed, because it did NOT use
stock peripherals. The innovation there was the reformulation of the rubber
curing problem as a problem involving probes, actuators, and input/output
through a computer.
Nowadays, the "computerization" of any problem WOULD be obvious
(everyone "computerizes" every problem now), and most sensors and
actuators are designed to be computer-conencted, but at the time the
rubber-curing patent was filed, it was arguably NOT obvious to hook the sensors
up to a computer.[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]
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| Authored by: Anonymous on Monday, June 11 2012 @ 12:12 PM EDT |
I thought the point of patents was to reward disclosure of inventions and
provide incentives for R&D, not to reward eureka moments. I think it's
fairly doubtful whether these two reasons apply to software either, firstly no
developer reads the patent disclosures except lawyers, and secondly, R&D
incentives are already adequately guaranteed through copyright.[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]
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