Fundamentally, a software program is nothing but a very long
and
precise description of exactly what is to happen. Going from a vague
idea to
a working product requires dealing with a huge number of
individually trivial
details in order to build that description...
All of that work is left
out of a patent. It *has* to be, because if
every small point of design and
implementation was covered, the
patent would be enormous and would cover only
the particular system
the patentee built -- thus rendering it useless for
crippling the
competition.
Unless you forgot the <sarcasm>
tags, you ought to read what the USPTO has to say about the description and claims of a
patent:
The specification must include a written description of the
invention and of the manner and process of making and using it, and is required
to be in such full, clear, concise, and exact terms as to enable any person
skilled in the technological area to which the invention pertains, or with which
it is most nearly connected, to make and use the
same.
Without all that detail, the patentee has NOT
provided the "full, clear, concise and exact terms" so that someone
skilled in the "arts" can "make and use the same" - the person using the
patent would only be able to make something that might be something like the
original "invention" - and as such would NOT be eligible for patent
protection (something the USPTO seems to have forgotten).
The point of
patents is to protect novel ways (NOT ideas) that improve things. If you have a
process that converts A to B and part of that process is novel (that may have
required lots of expense in finding) then having patent protection on that
part of the process makes sense: there would be full, clear,
concise and exact details of how that part of the process works. BUT it
would allow others to look at that part of the process and see if they could
develop a better way of doing it - the patent holder may have found the best
(most efficient, etc) way of doing it and so licensing the patent would be cost
effective.
However, someone may find an even better way of doing it. BUT by
your argument, they would not be allowed to do so because it would be
indistinguishable from the patented invention as the details of the process
would be missing and it would contain exactly the same vague
description.
With software, the program may be a very detailed description
of what the CPU has to do at every click of the clock, but that is not what is
needed; what is needed is "rough but detailed" directions: when asked for
directions to somewhere I don't give details down to the last inch, nor do I
tell about everything on the way that can be seen; I will use approximate
distances and selected landmarks, but there will be enough detail for the
requestee to follow the route I give them; in fact anyone following those
instructions will follow exactly the same route from A to B - I have given them
a route (algorithm) to get to the destination (but it might not be the most
efficient or best).
Consider this: suppose you want to add 36 and 49. You
can add 6 and 9 to get 15, put down the 5, carry the 1, add 3 and 6 and the
carried 1 to get 8, put that down in front to get the answer of 85. However, 49
is 50 minus 1, so 36 plus 49 is the same as 36 plus 50 minus 1: 36 add 50 is 86
minus 1 is 85. The latter is somewhat easier to do in the head.
By your
reckoning, if I had a patent on adding 36 and 49 (using the first method
described), I would describe it as a patent to add 36 and 49 without the gory
details of adding the units, carrying and adding the tens - afterall that's just
the "[very long and] precise detail of what is going to happen", having started
with the "vague idea" of adding 36 and 49 - and get a patent on "adding 36 and
50 and subtracting 1" even though I never touched that method.
To put it
another way, what you are proposing is a patent on [vague] ideas, not actual
inventions. [ Reply to This | Parent | # ]
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