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show the part which isn't abstract - in other words: show the part that is physical | 182 comments | Create New Account
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show the part which isn't abstract - in other words: show the part that is physical
Authored by: Anonymous on Thursday, February 14 2013 @ 03:45 PM EST

Abstract = "something that can be done in the mind" - in the words of one of the Supremes authorings: with pencil and paper.

That is supposed to be the dividing line. You can write 2+2=4 on a paper with pencil, or you can "push the buttons '2' '+' '2' '=' on a calculator and review the result".

The following are physical in existance:

    paper
    pencil
    calculator
Everything else about adding 2 and 2 to come up with 4 is abstract. You can directly point to the physical, you can not directly point to the abstract.

The best you can do is point to something else that is physical, draw correlations between the physical and abstract, then apply the logic "the actual horse is physical and the picture of the horse has lots in common with the horse so it must be physical too".... except you can't get away from the reality you must feed the real horse to keep it alive and you don't have to feed the picture of the horse no matter how many correlations you draw. To avoid the people who will nit that a horse can't be patented (genes?) I present the exact same analogy with:

    The coffee pot which you can poor water into and put coffee grounds in
and
    The picture of the coffee pot
You'll never get away from the reality you can't drink anything out of the picture except the paints/lead/inks that was used to create it (and only if they haven't dried).

Obviously - and it should have been obvious - that is what I meant with "show me the chip". An actual physical something.

You mention an FPGA. Obviously there's physical implementations of it. There may also be non physical implementations.

The physical implementation should qualify for patent protection (no one is arguing against this).

The non physical implementation should never be eligible for patent protection - for example the blueprint. This is where people disagree.

As a result, I stand by the concept I spoke of:

    show me the physical embodiment of the claimed invention
and stand by the example I provided:
    show me the chip - not the blueprint of the chip, but the physical chip itself

RAS

[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]

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