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Warp wrote:
> Darren New <dne### [at] san rrcom> 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.
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>> So, technically you could argue that you're using LZW not to compress,
>> but to obfuscate your data? A slight compression being just a
>> side-effect :-)
>
> Yes, exactly. If, for example, the steps you follow to do LZW
> compression was one step of an encryption algorithm, it wouldn't be
> encumbered by the patent.
>
> If you're not compressing data with it, it's not patented. Just like if
> you're not encryption data, modular exponentiation isn't patented.
Except that, of course, all of this is nonesense. In reality, as soon as
you dare to *touch* LZW, the lawers will say "hey, that's patented", and
threated to sue you off the face of the Earth. The fact that technically
you haven't infringed anything is irrelevant. FUD.
--
http://blog.orphi.me.uk/
http://www.zazzle.com/MathematicalOrchid*
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Orchid XP v8 wrote:
> Except that, of course, all of this is nonesense. In reality, as soon as
> you dare to *touch* LZW, the lawers will say "hey, that's patented", and
> threated to sue you off the face of the Earth. The fact that technically
> you haven't infringed anything is irrelevant. FUD.
Well, that's true, yes. But not really relevant to the discusion of the
legalities. I'm still not a lawyer, btw.
--
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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>> Except that, of course, all of this is nonesense. In reality, as soon
>> as you dare to *touch* LZW, the lawers will say "hey, that's
>> patented", and threated to sue you off the face of the Earth. The fact
>> that technically you haven't infringed anything is irrelevant. FUD.
>
> Well, that's true, yes. But not really relevant to the discusion of the
> legalities. I'm still not a lawyer, btw.
The number of technologies on the planet which never really take off
because people keep muttering "oh, that *might* be patented..." is silly.
But sure, arguably the fact that you can shut down a company just by
*threatening* to sue them is a flaw of the justice system itself, not
patent law specifically...
--
http://blog.orphi.me.uk/
http://www.zazzle.com/MathematicalOrchid*
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Orchid XP v8 wrote:
> But sure, arguably the fact that you can shut down a company just by
> *threatening* to sue them is a flaw of the justice system itself, not
> patent law specifically...
Actually, truly silly patent suits tend to be settled pretty fast and cheap.
If (for example) your product was a database engine using LZW-type lookups
for storage and not compression, it's probably pretty easy to get it thrown
out cheaply.
The problem comes when people have to argue over what they think the patent
means by the word "number" or "transmit" or something. Then you get a big
fight, and depending on what the judge thinks, you might win or lose right
there.
For example, the holders of the LZW patent might try to argue that
"compression" includes storage of ASCII codes on disk, since the font glyphs
for letters occupy more than one byte. *That* is the stupid "you certainly
weren't thinking that when you wrote the patent" kinds of stuff I've had to
deal with.
--
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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Darren New <dne### [at] sanrrcom> wrote:
> > 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.
What I meant was to get around the restriction that mathematical formulae
cannot be patented.
"This is not a mathematical formula. This is using a mathematical formula
for a specific purpose. (Just because this is basically the *only* purpose
for which the formula can be used is irrelevant.)"
In other words, they are getting around the restriction by playing with
words and terms. The end result is still exactly the same: The math formula
has been patented.
(Good thing the LZW patent expired years ago, btw. No need to worry anymore
about making your programs support GIF and whatever.)
--
- Warp
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Warp wrote:
> "This is not a mathematical formula. This is using a mathematical formula
> for a specific purpose. (Just because this is basically the *only* purpose
> for which the formula can be used is irrelevant.)"
Why would you assert it's the only use for that mathematical formula?
If you patent the same formula for a different use, then both patents are
valid and neither conflicts with the other.
You're working hard to make it not make sense, when in practice, the
difference between "a mathematical formula" and "a mathematical formula
applied a particular algorithm for a particular goal" is a well-understood
difference.
If your mathematical formula is so specific that it's literally impossible
to use it for any other purpose, then it's an algorithm to achieve a
specific goal and no longer a mathematical formula.
(Note that the LZW patent doesn't even have a formula in it, so it's not
really a good example of patenting a mathematical formula.)
> In other words, they are getting around the restriction by playing with
> words and terms. The end result is still exactly the same: The math formula
> has been patented.
No. Really. It hasn't. You can use that formula to draw pretty pictures,
for example, and they have no patent on that.
> (Good thing the LZW patent expired years ago, btw. No need to worry anymore
> about making your programs support GIF and whatever.)
Yep. And the RSA patent.
--
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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Darren New <dne### [at] sanrrcom> wrote:
> > (Good thing the LZW patent expired years ago, btw. No need to worry anymore
> > about making your programs support GIF and whatever.)
> Yep. And the RSA patent.
Now we only have about 10 million other software patents to worry about.
I think some software companies (at least in the US) have dedicated people
whose only purpose is to research whether the company is breaking some
software patents. And it's a full-time job.
--
- Warp
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> I think some software companies (at least in the US) have dedicated people
> whose only purpose is to research whether the company is breaking some
> software patents. And it's a full-time job.
Of course, in fact I would say *most* medium to large companies have at
least one person to check this kind of thing. It's not just software, if
you are manufacturing and selling a physical product you also need to check
you are not breaking some patent (unless you think it's fun to go back and
redesign and retool everything), and of course this takes resource. Things
like wiring up LEDs in a certain way or screwing things together in a
certain way are patented.
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scott wrote:
> Things like wiring up LEDs in a certain way or screwing
> things together in a certain way are patented.
I wonder if anybody has a patent on being a jackass?
...come to think of it, I do vaguely recall somebody attempting to claim
a patent on patent trolling...
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