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| Authored by: celtic_hackr on Friday, November 30 2012 @ 12:09 PM EST |
Yes, I read that. I like this part better than your part 1. Although, I still
feel, that the courts won't care for this argument. Some courts might. As more
mathematicians become judges.
This article made me think of an updated version of my programs == player piano
song rolls argument.
Consider this. A person invents an electric organ that has multiple
"voices", musical instrument sounds. Let's pretend no one has made one
before, and this organ uses a PROM to store the musical voices, it stores 16
voices.
Now someone else comes along and makes a similar organ organ with 16
"different" voices, with the instructions on how to make those voices
also stored in a PROM. By the current argument in software patents, this is a
new device and worthy of a patent like the original one. See how ridiculous the
new device argument is now? (I know we all see the program makes a new machine
argument as silly. Dangerous and harmful but silly.)
But let's take it a step further. Let's take this inventor's organ, remove the
PROM and insert an EEPROM, hack up the board a bit and add the new ability to
rewrite the voices on the fly, anytime we want to by uploading new voice data
and logic. Now this would arguably be an improvement on the original invention
(I would argue it's an obvious improvement, but the PTO probably wouldn't), but
now using the "software is a new machine" argument. I could write a
different program for thousands of identical organs with different voices and
each one is "new patentable device". Because to make any new voice
requires both data, and digital logic software/firmware. Now we've left
ridiculous behind and gone straight over the bridge over the River Absurdity.
It's still a single hardware invention, a digital organ, with the ability to
simulate thousands of musical instruments, but only 16 at a time (because that's
all the (EE)PROM holds).
Adding a bigger PROM doesn't create a new patentable device, changing the voices
doesn't create a new device, changing the kind of PROM doesn't make a new
device. Replacing the PROM with hardwired discrete electronics doesn't create a
new device.
Electronically they are all basically equivalent, with the single exception of
adding more of the same logic circuitry.[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]
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