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Authored by: PolR on Friday, July 20 2012 @ 04:14 PM EDT |
The whole point of a 'universal computer/turing-machine'
(what we
now know simply as a "computer"), is that it
simulates the actions of a whole
class of traditional
machine (e.g., a non-programmable calculator can
be
simulated by a program running on a programmable computer).
No
it is that the universal algorithm/Turing machine can compute every function
which is computable. This is called the Church-Turing thesis and it is the
mathematical principle which underlies the invention of the stored program
architecture computer.
Another way of stating the same point, stored program
computers don't work by simulating the actions of other machines. They work by
implementing a universal algorithm.
Likewise, a huge number of
traditional machines that clearly
would be patentable can be effectively
simulated and/or
prototyped by a computer. If, in the end, the machine
maker
decides to directly market the computer program rather than
build the
physical machine, why should that make it
unpatentable?
This topic
of this article is not whether software is patentable. It is whether programming
a computer makes a new machine. When you simulate a machine by definition you
don't make it.[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]
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Authored by: Anonymous on Friday, July 20 2012 @ 06:33 PM EDT |
The basic principle: a special-purpose machine is patentable. Using a
general-purpose machine for a single special case is not patentable.
That's *always* been patent law. Sure, it may suck for the people who
previously would have invented special-purpose machines, which are now
irrelevant, but *tough luck*.[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]
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