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Tim Cook wrote:
> Patrick Elliott wrote:
>> Not broken, invalid as a concept. Please describe to me *anything* in
>> software that isn't technically a set of instructions, which, in
>> principle, a human could not reproduce themselves, if they had some
>> means to access the same data, and some means to produce the same
>> results on a computer screen. Can't? Well, then, software patents are
>> not legal at all, since you can't patent such "instruction sets", as
>> defined by the laws set up to define what you *can* patent. The
>> problem is, no one mentions this niggling little detail, or makes sure
>> the people in the court, like the judge, knows that software "is" such
>> a thing. One side argues its not, but never manages to say why, the
>> other side argues it is, and babbles about unique, protecting IP,
>> etc., and the courts go by what they know, which is, "Someone wrote
>> the thing, and its all incomprehensible to me, so sounds like a
>> machine, not instructions."
>
> Isn't *everything* reducible to a "set of instructions"?
>
> --
> Tim Cook
> http://empyrean.freesitespace.net
Uh.. Please describe to me the "instructions" for *being* a shovel.
Making one, sure, but that isn't a "patent", only the final product is.
The act of using the shovel could be, but again, you can't use something
without having it first. In any case, I am not stating some vague
opinion on the matter. The actual, specific, legal definitions of
patents exclude "sets of instructions that a person can follow for get a
specific result". You can't patent mathematical formula, for example,
and the reason you can't is because they fall under that specific rule.
You can't patent the *process* used to build something, you can
trademark it, copyright it, if in written form, but only the *product*
of those steps is patentable, *not* the process used to get to it.
Software is, at a basic level, all math, and on a more general level,
its like the instruction manual used to tell you how to "build" a
cabinet, not the cabinet itself. The former is not patentable, the later is.
--
void main () {
If Schrödingers_cat is alive or version > 98 {
if version = "Vista" {
call slow_by_half();
call DRM_everything();
}
call functional_code();
}
else
call crash_windows();
}
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