|
|
|
| Authored by: Anonymous on Friday, February 08 2013 @ 08:13 PM EST |
Wondering the same thing. Kelley apparently agrees that any process that a human
could do on paper, however slowly, cannot be patented, and furthermore that
accelerating the process with a computer does not make it patentable.
That pretty much sums up my (and likely most geeks') argument for why software
cannot be patentable.
So if Kelley utterly lacks a grasp of the nature of software, why is he helping
set critical policy in this field? This is not meant to be an ad hominem
attack, just an expression of despair at a situation where the decision-makers
don't understand the issues at hand, and they refuse to listen to those who do
understand the issues.
Their minds seem to be able to contain these contradictory statements at the
same time:
1. No algorithms or other mathematics are patentable
but
2. Software is patentable
This is a contradiction that would make my head explode, as if someone said
"No humans are immortal, but Greek humans are immortal".
At some point the legal system is no longer going to be able to pretend that
software can be anything other than mathematical instructions, so they will have
to either eliminate software patents or accept that abstract ideas can be
patented.[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]
|
| |
| Authored by: Anonymous on Friday, February 08 2013 @ 08:14 PM EST |
the kind of software that runs the Hubble telescope,
because there's no oxygen up there to run a human mind.
Oh wait, there's no oxygen at USPTO either...
[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]
|
| |
| Authored by: Tolerance on Saturday, February 09 2013 @ 03:46 AM EST |
The obvious answer is those tasks which take longer than a
human lifetime to do mentally should be patentable if doable
by a machine.
"Obvious" here has hooks for the unwary. For example, by
lifetime we might mean the canonical three score years and
ten. Objections might be raised that a centenarian could in
principle finish some problems a septuagenerian could not;
such issues are best mended by adopting the longest lifespan
on record (126 years, last I looked).
But lifespan is a detail compared to problems, based on
current or foreseeable technology, which blur the
distinction between mind and machine. It's one think to say
human thought can be patented. What do we do when humans
come with computers wired into the brain?
By 2020 I expect primitive neural implants. We've already
had cochlear implants since 1958 (with pitch synthesis since
1972); visual prosthetics (synthetic retinas) are in
development, and bear in mind that retinas are effectively
brain cells.
It's only a matter of time before other co-processors are
wired into human brains for special purposes, like military
pilots, allowing paraplegics to walk, or instant recall of
reference texts.
---
Grumpy old man[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]
|
| |
| Authored by: Anonymous on Sunday, February 10 2013 @ 05:49 PM EST |
Some lawyer should have responded to Judge Moore's list of components:
"That's prior art, prior art, prior art, prior art, assembled in a fashion
which is prior art. Then the defendants added some abstract ideas which are
also prior art. This is the antithesis of patentable."[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]
|
| |
| Authored by: Anonymous on Sunday, February 10 2013 @ 08:34 PM EST |
In fact, when debugging software, one relies on the fact that software
instructions can be performed mentally or with a pen and paper. We have
debugging tools that speed up the process in the same way a computer speeds up
the process of executing an algorithm, but if sofware was not 'abstract'
according to the legal definition, we couldn't write it and more importantly,
get it to work. If you could not read the code and simulate the execution in
your head, how could you figure out what was broken?[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]
|
| |
| Authored by: Ian Al on Monday, February 11 2013 @ 11:04 AM EST |
How someone who cannot execute the process or the function using their mind and
a pencil an paper could write software to do what they cannot comprehend.
---
Regards
Ian Al
Software Patents: It's the disclosed functions in the patent, stupid![ Reply to This | Parent | # ]
|
|
|
|
|
