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The information on Groklaw is not intended to constitute legal advice. While Mark is a lawyer and he has asked other lawyers and law students to contribute articles, all of these articles are offered to help educate, not to provide specific legal advice. They are not your lawyers.

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Does Programming a Computer Make A New Machine?~By PolR | 756 comments | Create New Account
Comments belong to whoever posts them. Please notify us of inappropriate comments.
Does Programming a Computer Make A New Machine?~By PolR
Authored by: Wol on Sunday, July 22 2012 @ 02:58 PM EDT
My reaction to that is "well, how come a computer is a patentable object?
Without software, it cannot do anything, therefore by that argument a computer
cannot be patentable because it is useless".

Doesn't a patentable object have to have some form of utility (apart from being
a doorstop!)?

Cheers,
Wol

[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]

courts which have deliberately rejected this
Authored by: Anonymous on Sunday, July 22 2012 @ 03:11 PM EDT
That's the nub of the matter. It pains me to see so much effort wasted
here trying to find the number of algorithms on the head of a pin,
when it boils down to the law being for lawyers and the rest of us
who know the subject matter are not allowed a word in.

Solutions? Ignore the law when it is wrong? Easy to say, but could
have bad side effects on society. All software must be GPL?
Society doesn't seem ready for that yet either. Maybe there is no
middle ground, which is why the lawyers seem so happy with
their billable hours.

That Intel document should be introduced in evidence, yes all
4000 pages. By the time it got up to SCOTUS more than a couple
of times that the lower courts were ignoring the manufacturer's
documentation of the "machine" we might hear a head or two roll.
Good luck with that.

[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]

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