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| Authored by: Wol on Thursday, May 23 2013 @ 05:37 PM EDT |
Would you say that an answer to your High School Diploma Maths paper should be
patentable subject matter? The question might be ten lines on the question
paper, but three or four pages for the answer ... after all, that also involves
a lot of creativity (especially once you start getting into calculus or
statistics ...). Even more so for your Ph.D. dissertation, which if maths is
patentable then by definition the dissertation should (as new research) actually
GET a patent!
Software is exactly the same - the difficult part is defining the problem. Once
you've done that, the rest is just working out.
When you're doing it with materials, however, things ARE different, and I think
your post falls into the trap of assuming that our scientific rules tell nature
what to do. " The laws of nature are just math, after all." Correct.
And nature has this very annoying habit of ignoring our laws and doing something
else instead.
THAT imho is where patents belong. You use the laws of nature to work out what
SHOULD happen, and then you get your patent on the techniques you use to make
sure it DOES happen. To give an example I've used before, the equation behind
the internal combustion engine is "petrol + oxygen => carbon dioxide +
water + energy". Except it doesn't! And you have to pull all sorts of
clever tricks to harness the energy, and all sorts of other clever tricks to try
and make the equation run to completion. Patents should be granted for the work
needed to make reality comply with theory, not just on the application of
theory.
After all, if patents are granted on theory, I could get a patent on a hammer
falling faster than a feather because it's heavier (hint - an astronaut tried it
on the moon - it didn't work!).
Cheers,
Wol[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]
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