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
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