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Groklaw's Response to the USPTO's Request for Suggested Topics for Future Discussion & A Supplement ~pj | 179 comments | Create New Account
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Groklaw's Response to the USPTO's Request for Suggested Topics for Future Discussion & A Supplement ~pj
Authored by: Anonymous on Monday, March 18 2013 @ 02:58 PM EDT

Thanks for this.

Footnote 169 clarifies the departure from Peirce's nomenclature.

Footnote 171 resolves my confusion as to why a 'referent' is said to be a physical artifact, while Peirce's 'object' may be both material and immaterial.

Page 1435 discusses the distinction between signs which are icons and signs which are indexes (indices).

Page 1441 concludes that the functioning of a computer model as an icon or index is irrelevant to patent eligibility analysis.

Although the author suggests that patent eligibility is invariant to whether a computer model functions as an icon (or index), the author later on suggests that the patentability of iconic computer models should be treated as suspect at best:

The spinner-machine is a model of a real-world system in the exact same way that the iconic programmed computer that inversely correlates two variables can function as a model of a real-world system. The two machines are semiotically indistinguishable. The spinner-machine and the programmed computer (the sign-vehicles) both stand for the real-world system of chemical concentrations discovered by the researcher (the referents) because of the mental concepts in the minds of the people who use the devices (the interpretants). Viewed as a question of semiotic logic, there is no good semiotic reason why one should be a patentable invention but the other should not. A patent regime in which the spinner-machine is eligible for patent protection is difficult to imagine, however, so the routine patentability of iconic computer models should be treated as suspect at best.

It would seem that the author does feel that qualifying computer models as iconic may determine patent eligibility. Unless, we consider all computer models as being iconic.

[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]

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