In a more modern world, an aircraft that is aerodynamically
unstable (e.g. flying wing) cannot be controlled by a human without external
support of either a digital computer or electronic circuits that are effectively
an analog computer. In a digital computer, the software is necessary for this
control. In this case, I think the software to accomplish this task would be
part of a patentable process
The software used for controlling
unstable airplanes (and millions of other things in this world) is based on an
algorithm called a Kalman filter. The heart of this algorithm is a mathematical
operation called matrix inversion. The Kalman filter can also been seen as a
recursive Bayesian estimator. If someone were able to patent
this:
[ inputs ] --> [ Kalman filter ] ---> [ controls
]
then they would own the world. The idea of parceling out the
world so one person owns apply it to airplanes, another person owns applying to
boats, and so on is equally
ridiculous.
Most of people who are involved
in deciding whether something is patentable or not simply do not understand what
they are dealing with and are therefore hard up against Clarke's Third Law:
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic. To
them, something like using a computer to make an unstable airplane fly is such a
wondrous thing, it just must deserve patent protection.
As technology
advances, this gap in understanding also expands making the problem worse and
worse with even more bone-headed patent decisions coming down from on high.
Even though the people who are actually doing the innovating have been begging
the government to stop screwing everything up; arrogance, hubris, and greed have
caused the disruptive interference to increase.
I know of only one
solution that will prevent human-stupidity from permanently halting human
innovation. We must draw a clean line between what is patentable and what is
not. The line should be so obvious that even law-makers, lawyers, judges, and
patent clerks can see it and can almost always agree on which side of the line a
potentially patentable device lies even when they lack a clear understanding of
all the technology under the hood. Without such a bright line, there will
always be an overwhelming financial incentive for patent trolls to tax the
innovative because paying off the trolls will be much cheaper than defending
yourself in court
and going to court will always be a crap-shoot.
It is
not possible for everyone involved in the patent process become an expert in all
of the technologies involved in possible patents. Our current system requires
such ubiquitous expertise, the lack of which is one of the reason our system is
failing so badly. For software, there exists only one clean, bright line that
can be understood by both experts and non-experts alike. That line is pure
information processing. Like in the Diehr decision, the purely
informational aspects of a device must not be considered when determining if it
is patentable. But unlike Diehr if the device is considered
patent-worthy then those informational aspects must not be covered by the
patent.
There is no other solution. Technology has advanced to the
point where no one person can be
an expert in everything. Without years of
training, most people can't even understand the
language used for talking about
the technical details of complex devices. The
best we can do is draw a clean
line between an area where untrained people have
at least a hope of
understanding what is going on (physical devices) and an
area where it is known
there are many things they cannot comprehend without years
of extra training
(information processing).
This way we won't have to try to explain why
software really is math to people who don't even understand the language we are
speaking in. We won't have to haggle over what is an algorithm and what is not
with people who don't know what we are talking about. Educating the rest of the
world so they can meaningfully engage in such conversations is futile. On the
other hand, it is much easier to explain to people how to simply separate out
the purely informational processing parts of a device.
---
Our job
is to remind ourselves that there are more contexts
than the one we’re in now — the one that we think is reality.
-- Alan Kay [ Reply to This | Parent | # ]
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