decoration decoration
Stories

GROKLAW
When you want to know more...
decoration
For layout only
Home
Archives
Site Map
Search
About Groklaw
Awards
Legal Research
Timelines
ApplevSamsung
ApplevSamsung p.2
ArchiveExplorer
Autozone
Bilski
Cases
Cast: Lawyers
Comes v. MS
Contracts/Documents
Courts
DRM
Gordon v MS
GPL
Grokdoc
HTML How To
IPI v RH
IV v. Google
Legal Docs
Lodsys
MS Litigations
MSvB&N
News Picks
Novell v. MS
Novell-MS Deal
ODF/OOXML
OOXML Appeals
OraclevGoogle
Patents
ProjectMonterey
Psystar
Quote Database
Red Hat v SCO
Salus Book
SCEA v Hotz
SCO Appeals
SCO Bankruptcy
SCO Financials
SCO Overview
SCO v IBM
SCO v Novell
SCO:Soup2Nuts
SCOsource
Sean Daly
Software Patents
Switch to Linux
Transcripts
Unix Books

Gear

Groklaw Gear

Click here to send an email to the editor of this weblog.


You won't find me on Facebook


Donate

Donate Paypal


No Legal Advice

The information on Groklaw is not intended to constitute legal advice. While Mark is a lawyer and he has asked other lawyers and law students to contribute articles, all of these articles are offered to help educate, not to provide specific legal advice. They are not your lawyers.

Here's Groklaw's comments policy.


What's New

STORIES
No new stories

COMMENTS last 48 hrs
No new comments


Sponsors

Hosting:
hosted by ibiblio

On servers donated to ibiblio by AMD.

Webmaster
The formulas only describe what is to be done. | 277 comments | Create New Account
Comments belong to whoever posts them. Please notify us of inappropriate comments.
The formulas only describe what is to be done.
Authored by: Jeays on Tuesday, October 09 2012 @ 08:52 PM EDT
Surely a method is just information, and can be sent to someone else without
depriving the sender of it. So why are methods patentable?

[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]

The formulas only describe what is to be done.
Authored by: Wol on Wednesday, October 10 2012 @ 09:10 AM EDT
As a photographer, I'd say there's no problem patenting a new lens. Thing is,
new lenses ARE possible.

Long ago, I had a "long focus" lens. That is, a 500mm lens that was
half a metre long. Pretty poor quality, but more than good enough. Then I
replaced it with a 500mm cat. About 150mm long. How did they do that!? Certainly
patentable!

Most modern lenses bear no resemblance between their physical and logical
length. Most modern zooms aren't "trombone action" anymore, so their
focal length changes while their physical length doesn't. Patentable.

And now we've gone to digital, the glass itself has had to change - when I put
my old film-grade lenses on my new digital camera, the quality often isn't that
good. The improvements are patentable.

Thing is, in every circumstance, I've described a *physical* *improvement* to
the lens. That's not true of "adding a computer program to a
computer".

Cheers,
Wol

[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]

The formulas only describe what is to be done.
Authored by: jjs on Wednesday, October 10 2012 @ 05:49 PM EDT
No, the machine that implements the method is patentable. (at
least, that's the way it should be). The method is
information, potentially copyrightable. Why should something
get both copyright and patent protection?

---
(Note IANAL, I don't play one on TV, etc, consult a practicing attorney, etc,
etc)

[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]

Groklaw © Copyright 2003-2013 Pamela Jones.
All trademarks and copyrights on this page are owned by their respective owners.
Comments are owned by the individual posters.

PJ's articles are licensed under a Creative Commons License. ( Details )