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| Authored by: PolR on Monday, October 15 2012 @ 01:42 AM EDT |
I will answer what I think is the critical part of your "splitting hair" for the
sake of the argument. I think these are good points because they are likely to
be argued by those who support software patents.
If there exists
such a point where the meanings within the mathematical model
take one meanings
beyond the original pure math. In a computer it's not
unreasonable to say that
point is execution time; when all the math gets
transformed into a machine state
represented by, electrons and voltages held in
arrays of doped silicon and
eventually take part in enhancing the computer
operators personal experience in
a way that was expressed by a software
developer. or
something.
No. This doesn't happen during the execution of the
program. Math is never transformed into electrons. This is like saying a legal
brief is transformed into a stack of paper covered with ink at the time of
printing. The semantical relationship goes the other way round. The symbols
convey the meanings. The meanings is not transformed into symbols.
Semantics
is not an action of the computer. It is an operation of knowledge. The reader
knows the language and can recognize meanings into the symbols. This is true for
a written brief. This is true for data in a computer.
Do you know Chinese?
Or Russian? Take a foreign language. Imagine you are given a computer using an
unknown user interface in that foreign language. You won't understand a single
thing about the data. You don't know the language. But someone with knowledge of
the language will use the computer just fine. Semantics is a function of the
user's knowledge.
Perhaps software patents make sense of you
consider them to cover machine
characteristics as a whole, perhaps it's better
to view software not as a
separate or discrete unit, but as a part of a computer
that works by enhancing
the characteristics of the machine as a whole. That way
the results of the
mathematics and the cold hard electrons at work are more
distant in mind buried
under layers and layers of theoretical virtual machines.
We can approach the
users experience and how the characteristics of the machine
enhance his living
experience.
Semantics is not a physical
component of a machine. By that logic the meaning of a legal brief would improve
a stack of paper covered with ink. If we consider the document as a whole the
meaning is an improvement to an article of manufacture. This type of argument
could be used to patent any type of contents stored on every type of physical
supports.
Your argument is tantamount to say that contents is something
physical which should be patentable because it improves how the user experiences
the physical device.
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