Orchid XP v8 wrote:
> Units can be encoded as numbers. Well *everything* can be encoded as 
> numbers. And numbers, of course, can be encoded as things.

Nope. Sorry. That jug of milk in the fridge there? You can't encode that as 
numbers. No amount of numbers will pasteurize it either.

>>  > If software code is "a series of instructions" then it's like a manual
>>
>> No, it's like an industrial process, which is patentable. Why should 
>> an industrial process written down in a book be patentable but an 
>> industrial process written down in a machine-readable file not? 
>> Indeed, that's how software patents are written. You don't patent the 
>> code. You patent machines running the code.
> 
> Not last time I checked. E.g., the patent on LZW, the patent on using 
> XOR drawing, the patent on clicking a button to order stuff off the 
> Internet, etc.

Read the claims carefully. "We patent a computer doing ..."

> If you have a machine that does something, which somewhere involves a 
> computer, sure, that should be patentable. But I don't think you should 
> be able to patent the fact that a if you multiply two numbers together 
> and then multiply the product by the multiplicative inverse of the 
> second number in some finite field it yields the first number should be 
> patentable.

It isn't. *Using* that to create public key encryption is patentable.

A coil of wire isn't patentable. Using a coil of wire to tune a radio 
receiver is patentable.

> But hey, I guess that's no different than some guy in his guarage making 
> a new extra-soft kind of foam and then getting sued because some 
> petrochemical giant somewhere already makes something similar...

Yes, exactly.

Now, the problem with software patents isn't that you're patenting the 
software, but that people try to read into the claims all kinds of formal 
equivalents they didn't think of when they wrote the patent.

If you patent a way to make asprin, I don't have to worry about doing the 
exact same steps if I use it to make motor oil.

But I've seen software patents on things like mechanisms to dial telephones, 
and the argument in court was along the lines of "well, if you substitute 
the credit card number for the phone number, and you substitute the person's 
voice with his signature, and you substitute the vendor's PBX with his cash 
register, then Visa is violating our voice-dialing patent by accepting 
credit cards!"  That's just absurd.

And in every case, you could easily look at that patent and understand what 
they were trying to patent, and understand exactly how that didn't cover 
what the other party was doing, yet it still gets argued stupidly in front 
of judges.

-- 
   Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   Insanity is a small city on the western
   border of the State of Mind.

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