Darren New wrote:
> Patrick Elliott wrote:
>> a computer with software on it **always is**?
> 
> Nobody said it always is. There are many patents rejected, both for 
> software and hardware.
> 
>> Where is this imaginary line drawn between these things, and why is it 
>> so damned inconsistent as to when, how, and if, it qualifies as 
>> "improving" the machine?
> 
> Because you're patenting the results, not how you get there.
> 
The problem of course being that the "result" is one of two things, a 
machine, which is following instructions, and therefor isn't really 
"improved", since its not doing something it couldn't, just something it 
didn't have instructions for, or its the *output*, which is like a 
printed book. I.e., it doesn't matter if your "printer"/"printing press" 
is printing to CD, video, sound, paper, or the damn moon, the end result 
is not a machine itself. And, a machine following instructions on how to 
produce that isn't somehow "improved" by loading code into it, otherwise 
software would be patentable *directly*, without the legerdemain and 
slight of hand being used to argue that its "improving" something else.

This, to me, is the key problem. A lot of stuff is... well, like the 
patent for "one click to buy from Amazon". Where is the "machine" 
involved? Its not the button you click, that is just the machine 
following instructions that say, "If the mouse clicks here, inform some 
code", which is instructions to send something to the web, where more 
instructions tell the other end to use that data to do something. At no 
point in the process is there a discreet "machine", other than the 
physical hardware. And the patent isn't about executing that specific 
bit of code on a specific bit of hardware. Its software, running 
software, interpreting data, which is sent by other software, which is 
**very** indirectly run on a machine. A machine that is a "general 
purpose" device, designed to mimic the human ability to, "follow 
instructions". What exactly got "improved" there? It certainly wasn't 
someone attaching a new part to a physical machine, or even *building* 
one that specifically handled that situation. Its all instructions, some 
of which just happen to include, "Wait for those other instructions, 
some place else, to give you data to act on." An instruction that is 
hardly different, in principle, to someone writing down on paper, "Wait 
until the sun goes down, before lighting the candle."

Its hard to conceive of a situation where you can logically argue that 
code, in whatever form, isn't, in principle, possible for a human to 
follow, or where the "way" the result is shown, or "how" it gets the 
data it needs, or "why" it needs to wait for that data, makes the 
resulting instructions stop being instructions, and become a "device" of 
some sort.

Point is, if I could build a robot that could read, and build, the same 
cabinet, from the same instructions, simply moving those instructions to 
a data chip doesn't make it an, "improvement to the robot". Its still 
"reading" them, following them, and performing steps, based on them, 
regardless of what they are *read* from, and the only protection those 
instructions should receive is copyright, not patent.

-- 
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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