Warp wrote:
> Darren New <dne### [at] sanrrcom> wrote:
>> Warp wrote:
>>> Darren New <dne### [at] sanrrcom> wrote:
>>>> In the US, for many years (and probably still now) mathematical algorithms 
>>>> cannot be patented.
>>>   You mean eg. LZW is not a mathematical algorithm?
> 
>> The operations it does are mathematical. *Using it for compression* is 
>> what's patented. Not actually running the algorithm, but running the 
>> algorithm with the intent to compress the data.
> 
>   That sounds nothing more than playing with words in order to get around
> the restrictions. A bit like "I'm not stealing, I'm just borrowing". Imagine
> if by saying that you get free of any punishment.

Nope. If you're not using it for compression, it's not patented. I'm not 
sure why you think it's "playing with words." I mean, damn, 90% of the legal 
system is "playing with words."

Now, granted, in this particular case, it's hard to imagine a use for the 
operations described in the LZW patent that don't involve compression.

But consider modular exponentiation, another patent that people tended to 
complain about. You can use modular exponentiation for things other than 
public key encryption - for example, you could imagine that if you take a 
prime number of buckets in a hashtable, you could find that using modular 
exponentiation somewhere along the way to map a hash code to a bucket would 
give greater efficiency. That isn't covered by the RSA patent.

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

Post a reply to this message