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
I agree | 756 comments | Create New Account
Comments belong to whoever posts them. Please notify us of inappropriate comments.
I agree
Authored by: Ian Al on Friday, July 20 2012 @ 06:38 AM EDT
It becomes a true example of the lawyers idea of taking a bundle of components
and switching paths between them (permanently, in this case) to produce the
newly invented machine.

However, Alappat shows the dangers of patenting a circuit on the basis of the
functions the circuit performs.

---
Regards
Ian Al
Software Patents: It's the disclosed functions in the patent, stupid!

[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]

Does Programming a Computer Make A New Machine?~By PolR
Authored by: albert on Sunday, July 22 2012 @ 03:55 PM EDT
This stuff is silliness to the nth degree.

Years ago, I saw an automatic lathe that was programmed by sticking plastic pins
into a board. Who's going to tell me that changing the arrangement of pins
makes a new machine? Yet, this is an exact analogy of the 'new machine' issue.


CPU, PGAs, etc. in a computer take input and produce output. If the machine the
computer resides in performs some useful, unique, novel task, such as making a
part, or controlling a process, then that part or process may be patentable, and
there is no need to patent the program that controls it. (The machine itself
could be patentable, if it does something old in a new, novel, etc. way) If the
part or process isn't patentable, then how could the program be patentable?

The problem with software patents is that they are attempts to control only the
computer part of a machine, and in fact, most s/w patents don't require a
machine; the computer IS the machine, and the output in question is simply data.
Now, we are dealing with algorithms, procedures, methods, etc., which should
not be patentable.

Just for fun, try reading a patent for a simple piece of hardware, or a simple
machine. It's all right there, prior art, drawings, descriptions, explanations.
It all seems pretty straightforward to me, but I'm an engineer. These are the
things to patent system was designed for, and it does a pretty good job.
Contrast this to the weasel-worded software patents. One can immediately see
something's wrong there.

Nothing I've read has convinced me of the efficacy of s/w patents. To continue
to issue them amounts to a wholesale revision of the history of s/w development.
Imagine where we would be if s/w patents had existed back in the 50's.


[ 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 )