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| Authored by: Wol on Wednesday, March 13 2013 @ 02:43 PM EDT |
The rule there is that the CD is the patented object. Again, we have the
printing press analogy. What is printed on the CD is copyright, not patent,
because what matters about it is the *meaning*, not the actual physical
dots/holes/marks/letters.
Cheers,
Wol[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]
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| Authored by: PolR on Wednesday, March 13 2013 @ 03:13 PM EDT |
> Life would be so much easier if ... the section 101
> definition of patentable contained the word 'physical'
> before the word 'process', where physical is tied
> to the real world actual material(s) being processed.
I don't think this would help. I am not 100% sure but I believe there is case
law which states 'processes' are what you are describing. Also the 'process' of
software is manipulation of electricity and this would count as 'physical'.
> I would love to know if and how semiotics
> might be used to define the bounds of software and/or
> be applied in such a way to definitively determine that
> Apple's bouncy rubber-band patent can be reduced to
> unpatentable mathematics and/or logic.
We don't try to define the bounds of software. The approach is to define the
bounds of what is abstract in a technology neutral manner. Software is caught in
this test along with other things which are not software.
Giving software a special treatment is frowned upon in patent law circles. They
argue patent law is applicable to all fields equally and making arbitrary
exceptions would undermine its purpose. We can avoid that objection by bringing
up a test which is technology neutral. Then there is no special treatment for
software.
We just the procedure suggested by law Professor Collins in his article. The
reference in in footnote 48.
This is a kind of copy and paste of the procedure the courts use to invalidate
patents on "new physical books" on the basis that the ink is
differently arranged on the pages. This is a trick to patent a novel, but it
fails because the courts have a legal doctrine they use to block these patents.
The say the printed matter can't be used to distinguish over the prior art. This
means nobody can argue a book is new and nonobvious on the basis of its
contents. If the only difference is the new novel then this is the same old book
and no patent can issue.
We need something like this for software. If the words of the claim refer to the
meaning of bits, this should never count as something that makes the invention
new and nonobvious. It is hard to imagine a pure software patent that survives
this kind of test. Lawyers may dress up the claim with words referring to
physical things all they want. If there is nothing new and nonobvious left when
the meaning of the data is filtered out they are still out of luck.
But there is a difficulty with claims where the rubber is actually cured.
Lawyers will argue the filter is overly broad because by the printed matter
doctrine test, the rubber curing patent would not issue. So in applying the
printed matter doctrine we need to distinguish between two types of meanings. On
one side we have interpretants which are thought in the human mind, like a
novel. On the other side there are referents which are the actual real world
things, like the curing of rubber. The printed matter doctrine should be applied
only to interpretants. When the meaning of data is a referent and this referent
is claimed as a part of the invention then we don't filter that out. This
narrows down the test to the proper degree.
[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]
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| Authored by: PJ on Wednesday, March 13 2013 @ 08:40 PM EDT |
The problem is, among others, that
... you know what? Read In Re Bilski. First
read the Federal Circuit ruling, and then
read the US Supreme Court, both of which
talk about physical and effects. You'll find
both <a
href="http://groklawstatic.ibiblio.org/staticpages/index.php%3fpage=2009022607324398&qu
ot;>here</a>. Sorry
I'm too rushed to explain more. [ Reply to This | Parent | # ]
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