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| Authored by: Anonymous on Friday, November 16 2012 @ 08:46 AM EST |
Personally, I'd go with "equivilent to a memory-limited Turing
Machine" as a starting point for a definition of a "general-purpose
computer"[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]
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| Authored by: Anonymous on Friday, November 16 2012 @ 12:24 PM EST |
Then they will likely lose to competition on the market. Imagine this: If
software patents apply only to "special purpose hardware", while
"general purpose hardware" gets a free pass. Some competitors who have
"software patents" that apply to the devices being sold might find it
convenient to make "general purposed" devices (hence no "software
patent" license obligations) that compete directly with "special
purposed" devices.
At the same time, they could target the companies with deep pockets who make the
"special purposed" devices to get licensing or disrupt competition.
Counter suing with "software patents" would be not possible on the
"general purposed hardware". Of course this is not foolproof even if
"general purpose hardware" is well defined. There are still other type
of patents and whatnots (not to mention that it's unpredictable when things go
to court).
Even so, if it comes down to cross-licensing deals, they could claim they don't
need to license their competitor's "software patents" for their
"general purpose hardware", while their competitor will need to
license their "software patents" for their competitor's "special
purpose hardware".[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]
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