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
What is art? | 456 comments | Create New Account
Comments belong to whoever posts them. Please notify us of inappropriate comments.
What is art?
Authored by: PolR on Sunday, December 02 2012 @ 05:12 AM EST
I think this situation is both simpler and more depressing.

The bulk of the legal profession including the courts have not accepted the
notion that computers are sign-vehicles. They think computers are the referent
of the descriptions of software. If a patent describes a computer algorithm, or
if it describes the functions of software, the courts think this is a
description of the programmed computer. This is the essence of the "make a
new machine" doctrine.

If we go to a bookstore and ask for the book about "hobbits traveling in
far away countries to destroy an evil ring" is the book the referent? Or is
it a sign-vehicle? This is the question the courts haven't figured out about
software patents. Patents are descriptions of sign-vehicles written in this
style.

Art is usually unpatentable because it fails the utility requirement of patent
law. Art is not "useful" in the patent law sense of
"useful". This has nothing to do with sign-vehicles, interpretants and
referents.

[ 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 ) 		Site layout based on Woodlands theme by Bryan Bell.
Groklaw logo by John Crowley.
News Picks logo by Ted Thompson.
Powered By GeekLog
Created this page in 0.03 seconds