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You've all gone totally mad... except for jbb | 393 comments | Create New Account
Comments belong to whoever posts them. Please notify us of inappropriate comments.
"they add (sort of)"
Authored by: Anonymous on Thursday, July 11 2013 @ 02:31 PM EDT

That stement in and of itself is the core of why software shouldn't be patentable.

You can concisely describe an apple, there is no "sort of".

But when dealing with abstract concepts - the ideas that patent law is not supposed to protect - "sorf of" is quite frequently used.

To describe it concisely so everyone understands it is not possible. It's not possible because language (another abstract concept) is a poor tool to use to describe the conceptual thoughts in another persons mind. Two people with even identical backgrounds and experiences can easily understand a description differently to each other simply because of where their minds were focused in that moment of description.

Even "bits" is nothing more then "yet another label" attached to represent a physical binary value.

    the magnetic field is present or it's not
    the electric flow is present or it's not
    the plastic is etched or it's not
They're just labels - abstract concepts to give to a binary physical object storing "something" that we interpret as information.

RAS

[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]

You've all gone totally mad... except for jbb
Authored by: PolR on Thursday, July 11 2013 @ 03:38 PM EDT
This is true, but this is beside the point I am making.

The point is this. The courts state that software patent cover the physical
structure of a circuit, or the process by which the circuit operates. I am
saying that the language found in patents doesn't describe the structure of a
circuit, even when one assumes incorrectly that programming a computer makes a
machine structure.

[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]

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