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| Authored by: rcsteiner on Monday, March 11 2013 @ 06:14 PM EDT |
Lawyers, like programmers, tend to have large egos, often for good reason, and I
certainly understand that it can be very hard to admit a mistake, especially a
fundamental one.
That doesn't excuse the fact that much of the existing case law in the US
appears to be based on legal fiction, and not fact, when it comes to the
patenting of software.
Just as many software designers and developers like myself admittedly fail to
understand the workings of the law at times, it seems that many lawyers fail to
understand even the most basic concepts behind information technology.
Software development is not a new discipline. There is no reason at all for this
type of willful ignorance to exist in the legal community, and yet it seems to
persist.
When the opinions of acknowledged experts are routinely brushed aside, it is
rarely done for intellectually honest reasons, at least in my experience.
Hopefully we'll see more judges and lawyers willing to explore this matter and
actually learn something about the world they live in.
The assertion that a general computer is somehow physically changed when a
specific program is loaded and executed on that device makes no more sense than
stating that the world is flat or the sun revolves around the earth.
All of those assertions are demonstrably untrue, and have been for decades.
Unfortunately, it sometimes takes a while for the light of truth to erase or
replace existing dogma.
I've found the lawyers I've met to be fairly bright people, at least in the
general case. Many of them might even be up to the task of writing a little
code now and then if they set their minds to it. :-) And I think that would
help. There's nothing like a little firsthand experience to offset a mistaken
idea or misunderstanding...
---
-Rich Steiner >>>---> Mableton, GA USA
The Theorem Theorem: If If, Then Then.[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]
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