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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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No you are missing the point | 756 comments | Create New Account
Comments belong to whoever posts them. Please notify us of inappropriate comments.
No you are missing the point
Authored by: wharris on Friday, July 20 2012 @ 12:17 PM EDT
I don't think anyone here is arguing that you can combine, for example, a
computer, an actuator, a camera, a sonar, and a lot of inspiration and hard work
to get a patentable device.

Nor is anyone arguing (at least not here) that creating an improved computer,
such as one that runs at 5GHz instead of 3Ghz, or that has a new type of memory
unit or a faster ALU would be patentable.

What we are arguing is that adding a program to a machine designed and intended
to execute programs does not improve the machine itself any more than adding a
heap of wood to a pickup truck is improving the truck, or plugging a TV on and
turning to channel 3 is improving the TV compared to leaving it unplugged and
untuned.

Do I improve my computer by setting a nice wallpaper on the background? Do I
improve my web browser by setting my home page to Google? Do I improve my
calculator by entering an approximate value for PI?

More to the point, I might "improve" a blank piece of paper by writing
a poem on it, but the result is covered by copyright law, not by patent law.

[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]

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