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
Thermo flask - a good comparison | 756 comments | Create New Account
Comments belong to whoever posts them. Please notify us of inappropriate comments.
Thermo flask - a good comparison
Authored by: PolR on Sunday, July 22 2012 @ 04:10 PM EDT
I like this idea. A computer is like a Thermo flask. You don't make a new Thermo
flask put putting iced tea in it instead of hot tea. Similarly you don't make a
new computer by putting software in it.

Notice that this comparison says nothing about the patentability of software. It
can still be claimed as a process without going against this argument. It just
says that no new machine is made.

In particular this refutes the notion that the unprogrammed computer is useless.
The computer has a utility similar to a Thermo flask. You can put software in
it. Then if people try to argue a computer can't do text processing without a
program they will have to explain why this is different from saying a Thermo
flask can't keep iced tea cold without iced tea in it. And if people try to
argue that putting the software in the computer improves the computer they will
have to explain why this is different from arguing putting iced tea in a Thermo
flask is an improvement over a Thermo flask without ice tea.

This is the difficulty in trying to argue a new machine is made without a
showing that a structural change to the machine is made. The words are losing
their definitional anchors. We no longer know what is a new function of the
machine or an improvement to the machine when we don't have the ability to tie
these notions with machine structure.

[ 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 )