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Patent office !=&&== reference library | 217 comments | Create New Account
Comments belong to whoever posts them. Please notify us of inappropriate comments.
Its the 'utilitarian' view
Authored by: Anonymous on Wednesday, November 28 2012 @ 02:12 PM EST
My pet carrot is very well trained.

I said stay and it hasn't moved, my dog on the otherhand is still working on
that trick.

[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]

Software to a computer equates to fingers to an abacus
Authored by: Anonymous on Wednesday, November 28 2012 @ 03:05 PM EST

To add to your thoughts outlining a single point of how software fails the concepts of patentability:

Some have attempted to use the argument "but if we build the functionality into the hardware you wouldn't have a problem with that - it's exactly the same as applying software".

What they are choosing not to acknowledge is that they are deliberately conflating the object with the act of using the object.

Consider the abacus as a great example. It's a physical tool that helps humans perform math.

This directly matches the computer. The computer is a tool that helps humans perform math.

To patent the application of software to a computer (applied instructions to the device) is exactly equivalent of patenting the application of fingers to the abacus.

I don't believe for an instant that the purpose of patents was to be applicable to simply using the invention.

Congress should clearly outline that the use of an invention is not patent eligible subject matter.

Keep in mind: I'm talking about the strict use - only - of an invention. Not the combining of one invention with another to produce a new invention - of which the application of fingers to an abacus does not form!

You want to combine a computer with gyros and wheels and such to create a robot? Ok, that's a patentable item. But the software to control what the robot does should never be patentable.

If you can patent different electronic signals as applied to a single physical device - then I've got a lot of numbers as applied to telephones I'd like to patent - oh, and I can simply author a very small algorithm - to be used by a human with pencil and paper - that can be used to walk through and create every possible number that can be entered. Of course, using a computer or abacus could certainly speed up the process of generating said numbers, with the exact same algorithm - the computer more so then the abacus simply because the computer works faster.

RAS

[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]

Patent office !=&&== reference library
Authored by: Anonymous on Thursday, November 29 2012 @ 04:35 AM EST
"But aren't there all sorts of people out there shouting about how patents
encourage innovation? .... Yes, there are. But there hasn't EVER been, and there
won't be till the heat death of the universe, ANYONE who's ever stood up and
said, "I had a problem I was trying to solve. I went down to the patent
office and found a patent that described the solution so that my hireling
programmers could implement it.""

Has anyone ever said that about any patent in any field?

Because isn't that the stated purpose of the patent office in the first place,
to let people find out about all these wonderful ideas that people are
disclosing?

[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]

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