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
Legal processes... | 756 comments | Create New Account
Comments belong to whoever posts them. Please notify us of inappropriate comments.
two nitpicks
Authored by: Anonymous on Friday, July 20 2012 @ 11:36 AM EDT
It shows that the concept of "abstract idea" is very hard to
define.

By the way, thanks for pointing out the case law on
"mathematical formula", a related and equally vague concept:
if I understand correctly, it's unpatentable if it is
expressed as a mathematical formula in mathematical
notation, and still unpatentable if it's expressed in words
that are equivalent to a mathematical formula.

Logically, that would make just about any process
unpatentable. Yet the statute clearly allows patents on
processes. As I said before, arguing about the "real
defnition" of mathematical formula gets us nowhere. We need
to look to the practical intent of the statute/precedent,
ignoring the horrible choice of words, and argue whether
algorithm X is "more like" whatever the court really meant
by "mathematical formula" than it is like the stuff that
court plainly meant to allow.

[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]

Legal processes...
Authored by: Imaginos1892 on Friday, July 20 2012 @ 02:53 PM EDT
Actually, law is like computer programming. A law is an
attempt to abstract away the details of individual cases
and arrive at an algorithm that will produce the correct
result in any similar situation. Semantic details like who
the parties are, where the dispute takes place, or what
specific facts are disagreed on, are not supposed to be
considered.
------------------------
Irony: falling off a chair while putting
up an OSHA workplace safety notice.

[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]

two nitpicks
Authored by: Anonymous on Friday, July 20 2012 @ 03:53 PM EDT
to me software is not an abstract idea. I would argue it is
one of many possible implementation of an idea.

software is to a computer like a story/lesson is to a brain.

like the brain processes the story/lesson so does the
computer process the software and if not forgotten it can be
used again.

I argue that nobody will call a human who learned a new
story a new species or even a new human.
analogous I argue that a computer getting a new program is
not a new device.

Regards, Martin

[ 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 )