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I disagree with your conflation of definitions | 627 comments | Create New Account
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I disagree with your conflation of definitions
Authored by: dio gratia on Thursday, November 01 2012 @ 06:23 PM EDT
I agree with almost the entirety of your original comment, although find I've not got my point across to which you most recently replied.

I say conflation of definitions because I believe you are attributing to the software the honor that belongs to the hardware!
Patent law makes no such distinction. Stallman points out that clever patent practitioners can and will overcome any such distinction.

1: You consider the idea to have software ports novel. I consider the idea to have software ports obvious once the hardware was adapted to allow for a concept already known!

To take that a step further, I'd say once the public learned you can take any informational process and automate it via the means of a computer - any application of software (even on physical processes yet to come where the designers realize they're just processing information) are blindingly obvious!

No. I do not consider software ports novel. The point I was attempting to make is that neither is your special purpose calculator by contrast. My previous comment should otherwise line up with the second para of your foot note.

The only other point of disagreement with your original comment is limited to your belief that Stallman's proposal couldn't work. I consider the ability for it to work limited by political process. Also you're example of a special purpose calculator isn't novel, other than as exercises in hardware description languages calculators today are microprocessor based and virtual hardware isn't novel either.

There is only one way software addresses patentable subject matter, through the transformation of matter, otherwise the only product is abstract ideas (e.g. signals of transient duration). We likewise see the novelty of 'on a computer' as lacking through saturation, though we're now seeing a spate of 'it can't be done anywhere but on a computer' or on a computer having specific properties (as in having software to perform particular functions) showing up in litigation.

Software can't be patented per se and Stallman's proposal has the effect of preventing the class of matter transformation effects that encloses transformation of magnetic reluctance, e.g. hysteresis patterns on disk platters or alignment of crystalline structures or positioning of doping hole traps (FPGAs, FLASH, etc.) by exemption when performed on a general purpose computer, where these transformations are the equivalent of subsequently recording a mental process results with pencil and paper. The overall purpose to prevent the patenting of abstract ideas through semantic antics by association with a computer when a computer would be the first choice of implementation anyway.

It's a Ferengi Rules of Acquisition problem. Where there is no profit there is no incentive to play creative semantic games. I've yet to meet a lawyer who will do so for recreation, although you get lawyers and law professors doing so for purposes of recognition just as we get slightly differing ideologies arguing dialectic differences as here or in say a Monty Python skit.

[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]

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