decoration decoration
Stories

GROKLAW
When you want to know more...
decoration
For layout only
Home
Archives
Site Map
Search
About Groklaw
Awards
Legal Research
Timelines
ApplevSamsung
ApplevSamsung p.2
ArchiveExplorer
Autozone
Bilski
Cases
Cast: Lawyers
Comes v. MS
Contracts/Documents
Courts
DRM
Gordon v MS
GPL
Grokdoc
HTML How To
IPI v RH
IV v. Google
Legal Docs
Lodsys
MS Litigations
MSvB&N
News Picks
Novell v. MS
Novell-MS Deal
ODF/OOXML
OOXML Appeals
OraclevGoogle
Patents
ProjectMonterey
Psystar
Quote Database
Red Hat v SCO
Salus Book
SCEA v Hotz
SCO Appeals
SCO Bankruptcy
SCO Financials
SCO Overview
SCO v IBM
SCO v Novell
SCO:Soup2Nuts
SCOsource
Sean Daly
Software Patents
Switch to Linux
Transcripts
Unix Books

Gear

Groklaw Gear

Click here to send an email to the editor of this weblog.


You won't find me on Facebook


Donate

Donate Paypal


No Legal Advice

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.

Here's Groklaw's comments policy.


What's New

STORIES
No new stories

COMMENTS last 48 hrs
No new comments


Sponsors

Hosting:
hosted by ibiblio

On servers donated to ibiblio by AMD.

Webmaster
From a Computer Scientist | 756 comments | Create New Account
Comments belong to whoever posts them. Please notify us of inappropriate comments.
From a Computer Scientist
Authored by: PolR on Friday, July 20 2012 @ 04:14 PM EDT
The whole point of a 'universal computer/turing-machine' (what we now know simply as a "computer"), is that it simulates the actions of a whole class of traditional machine (e.g., a non-programmable calculator can be simulated by a program running on a programmable computer).
No it is that the universal algorithm/Turing machine can compute every function which is computable. This is called the Church-Turing thesis and it is the mathematical principle which underlies the invention of the stored program architecture computer.

Another way of stating the same point, stored program computers don't work by simulating the actions of other machines. They work by implementing a universal algorithm.

Likewise, a huge number of traditional machines that clearly would be patentable can be effectively simulated and/or prototyped by a computer. If, in the end, the machine maker decides to directly market the computer program rather than build the physical machine, why should that make it unpatentable?
This topic of this article is not whether software is patentable. It is whether programming a computer makes a new machine. When you simulate a machine by definition you don't make it.

[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]

That's *exactly why* it makes them unpatentable.
Authored by: Anonymous on Friday, July 20 2012 @ 06:33 PM EDT
The basic principle: a special-purpose machine is patentable. Using a
general-purpose machine for a single special case is not patentable.

That's *always* been patent law. Sure, it may suck for the people who
previously would have invented special-purpose machines, which are now
irrelevant, but *tough luck*.

[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]

Groklaw © Copyright 2003-2013 Pamela Jones.
All trademarks and copyrights on this page are owned by their respective owners.
Comments are owned by the individual posters.

PJ's articles are licensed under a Creative Commons License. ( Details )