a computer program is not a patentable invention

keithr wrote:

> What makes software different? If you can patent a novel circuit or
> mechanism, why shouldn't you be able to patent a novel software process?
> Having been, at different times in my life, a hardware designer and
> (currently) a software developer, I do not see a difference between the
> two, they are the same thing carried out by different means.

 They're very different.  It's akin to patenting say, the ripple
sorting, or bubble sorting methods, (ignoring prior art for now) or any
other newfangled sorting method that's perhaps incredibly faster.

 This allows other vendors to develop very similar techniques to your
superduper sort method, without stealing your code, or even being aware
of your code.  It does happen.

 Under current law, there is no copyright violation.  But with patents,
in the event a very similar technique is found in a competitor's code,
the competitor would be liable for costly payments for code they wrote
years ago, and in good faith, never even knew it was similar to yours.

 Or vice versa.

> The main problem that I see is the way that software patents are issued,
> often for ill defined and questionablely novel ideas, but then that can
> also apply to other types of patents too.

 As Dr Phil would say, a good indicator of future behaviour is past
behaviour.

 The patent offices have proved to be full of idiots, who continually
pass through patents that have been in prior art use for a long time.

 Or, patenting some very vague description of some vague idea, that
could virtually describe anything.

 I'm not buying there's inherent built-in protection against that,
ensuring all ideas are specific.

 The proof is in the pudding, and the pudding smells funny.

In article <4bbb1f4a$0$21780$afc38c87@news.optusnet.com.au>, 
jt@techniciansyndrome.org.invalid says...
>  Under current law, there is no copyright violation.  But with patents,
> in the event a very similar technique is found in a competitor's code,
> the competitor would be liable for costly payments for code they wrote
> years ago, and in good faith, never even knew it was similar to yours.

AND, depending on code structure, optimizations, and CPU architecture, 
similar, but different, source code may compile to the same native CPU 
instructions.  So, who is the patent violator there?  The code writer or 
the compiler vendor?  Stranger things have happened.....

In article <81uukiFepfU1@mid.individual.net>, Don McKenzie  <5V@2.5A> wrote:
>
>This little gem comes from NZ via Computerworld.
>Tuesday, 06 April 2010
>
>========================
>
>Thumbs down for software patents in NZ
>Commerce Select Committee tips its hat to open source submissions
>
>Open source software champions have been influential in excluding
>software from the scope of patents in the new Patents Bill.
>
>Clause 15 of the draft Bill, as reported back from the Commerce Select
>Committee, lists a number of classes of invention which should not be
>patentable and includes the sub-clause &#4294967295;a computer program is not a
>patentable invention.&#4294967295;
>
>http://computerworld.co.nz/news.nsf/news/thumbs-down-for-software-patents-in-nz
>

Another bit of interesting news is that QUT and IP Australia is setting
up an experimental crowd-sourced prior art web site.  Register on the
site and you get to review applications for prior art and send notes on
what you find to the offical examiner.

<http://www.abc.net.au/rn/futuretense/stories/2010/2852587.htm>

Mark Zenier  mzenier@eskimo.com  
Googleproofaddress(account:mzenier provider:eskimo domain:com)

Don McKenzie wrote:
> 
> This little gem comes from NZ via Computerworld.
> Tuesday, 06 April 2010

They're more than a decade late on the bus, then.

> �a computer program is not a patentable invention.�

That's been the wording in Germany since just about forever.  Problem is 
that patent lawyers, as lawyers will, found a loophole to completely 
subvert the meaning of that clause.  They did so mainly by submitting 
not the algorithm itself, but rather a piece of hardware based on it, 
for patenting.  Once they got the patent, they applied it to other 
people's pure software works.

Which led to the _completely_ ridiculous situation where a piece of work 
was expressly denied a patent itself, but could still fall prey to other 
people's patents.

SW patents make no sense whatsoever.

Mark Zenier wrote:

[...]

>Another bit of interesting news is that QUT and IP Australia is setting
>up an experimental crowd-sourced prior art web site.  Register on the
>site and you get to review applications for prior art and send notes on
>what you find to the offical examiner.

nice idea. There are so many applications of stuff not being really
new but not widely known.

I'm only afraid that only few people will participate.

Oliver
-- 
Oliver Betz, Munich
despammed.com might be broken, use Reply-To:

On 2010-04-06, D Yuniskis <not.going.to.be@seen.com> wrote:
> Don McKenzie wrote:
>> 
>> This little gem comes from NZ via Computerworld.
>> Tuesday, 06 April 2010
>> 
>> ========================
>> 
>> Thumbs down for software patents in NZ
>> Commerce Select Committee tips its hat to open source submissions
>> 
>> Open source software champions have been influential in excluding 
>> software from the scope of patents in the new Patents Bill.
>> 
>> Clause 15 of the draft Bill, as reported back from the Commerce Select 
>> Committee, lists a number of classes of invention which should not be 
>> patentable and includes the sub-clause &ldquo;a computer program is not a 
>> patentable invention.&rdquo;
>> 
>> http://computerworld.co.nz/news.nsf/news/thumbs-down-for-software-patents-in-nz 
>
> Yay!  Though, frankly, a more reasonable approach would
> have been to *greatly* reduce the period in which patent
> a patent on such "art" is granted -- and prevent the patents
> from being "renewed".
>
> Given how quickly the industry moves, it's hard to imagine
> *anything* being worthy of protection for more than a few
> (e.g., 3-4) years.

Anything that becomes an accepted standard like LH-compression, 
VFAT/FAT-32, MPEG Layer 3 or H.264, can be a nice little earner
for the patent holder longer than that.


--- news://freenews.netfront.net/ - complaints: news@netfront.net ---

> so if I go in my basement and work on a new mousetrap for 10 years I
> can patent it, but if work on a new algorithm for 10 years it's
> somehow not worthy of protection?
>

You could patent it but unfortunately you use stairs to access the 
basement and as I patented "stair algorithms" many eons ago and all 
works derived therefrom you owe me big time, of course I waited until 
you'd made a commercial venture out of your mouse trap before I informed 
you off this.

In article <81uukiFepfU1@mid.individual.net>, Don McKenzie  <5V@2.5A> wrote:
>
>This little gem comes from NZ via Computerworld.
>Tuesday, 06 April 2010
>
>========================
>
>Thumbs down for software patents in NZ
>Commerce Select Committee tips its hat to open source submissions
>
>Open source software champions have been influential in excluding
>software from the scope of patents in the new Patents Bill.

It is pretty .......... to post news about a bill on an international
forum without even mentionning the country it is in.

<SNIP>

>
>Cheers Don...

--
-- 
Albert van der Horst, UTRECHT,THE NETHERLANDS
Economic growth -- being exponential -- ultimately falters.
albert@spe&ar&c.xs4all.nl &=n http://home.hccnet.nl/a.w.m.van.der.horst

Paul Carpenter wrote:

> In article <19a5f6cf-56ea-4eca-acf9-
> 72661f51eaf7@g11g2000yqe.googlegroups.com>, bungalow_steve@yahoo.com
> says...
> > On Apr 5, 4:14 pm, Don McKenzie <5...@2.5A> wrote:
> > > This little gem comes from NZ via Computerworld.
> > > Tuesday, 06 April 2010
> > >
> > > ========================
> > >
> > > Thumbs down for software patents in NZ
> > > Commerce Select Committee tips its hat to open source submissions
> > >
> > > Open source software champions have been influential in excluding
> > > software from the scope of patents in the new Patents Bill.
> > >
> > > Clause 15 of the draft Bill, as reported back from the Commerce Select
> > > Committee, lists a number of classes of invention which should not be
> > > patentable and includes the sub-clause ?a computer program is not a
> > > patentable invention.?
> > >
> > > http://computerworld.co.nz/news.nsf/news/thumbs-down-for-software-pat...
> > >
> > > Cheers Don...
> > >
> > > --
> > > Don McKenzie
> > >
> >
> > so if I go in my basement and work on a new mousetrap for 10 years I
> > can patent it, but if work on a new algorithm for 10 years it's
> > somehow not worthy of protection?
> >
> > a program is just a virtual machine
>
> There comes a problem with patenting software, consdiring the book
> analogy someone else cited.
>
> Patenting software is like patenting a book of a specific size,
> type and colour of paper, cover photo, and binding combination. The
> copyright for a book exists mainly on the content of the book (and
> ancilliaries like illustrations, photos, cover layout.
>
> Consider a novel circuit patent, and someone adds one resistor to
> improve it, they have improved upon the patent, not infringed it.
>
> How are you going to patent the software in binary form or at source
> level in what language for which host. One could agrue using a different
> compiler has improved upon the patent because using a different compiler
> or compiling switches has speeded the software up hence improved upon
> a previous patent.
>
> The algorithm used is best described without actual software as in
> 5 years everybody could be using it written in a different language
> for three new instruction sets of new cpus.
>
> Just the byte oreding of the storage could make it non-identical,
> let alone different instruction sets of the host that may improve it
> again.
>
> How are you going to patant software for any cpu, any language,
> any bus/register width, any memory size, any byte/word ordering.
> then prove the software is a copy.
>

To use both the book analogy in both the patent and copyright
sense. The result may be a far stronger protection for software.
I know about quite a few software patents but I know of very
few that generated enough revenue to pay for the costs of
protecting and enforcing the patent. I only know of two that
actually made real money.

Copyrights are a different matter. There are lots of precedents
and the courts know how to handles cases of rewritten
to circumvent as well as assign monetary awards. Depending
on country the copyright protection can last a long time to a
very long time.

There are several current very interesting open cases where
copyrights and not patents may affect software. The most
interesting one that I currently know about is a standard
40+ year old reference book of  polynomial constants.

Dropping software patents may result in software
protection with teeth.

Regards,

Walter Banks
--
Byte Craft Limited.

Walter Banks wrote:

> To use both the book analogy in both the patent and copyright
> sense. The result may be a far stronger protection for software.
>

To add one more comment. Much of the open source software
is primarily protected with copyrights.

Regards,


Walter..
--
Walter Banks
Byte Craft Limited
http://www.bytecraft.com