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Authored by: Anonymous on Thursday, March 28 2013 @ 10:05 AM EDT |
"We migrated key functions from Windows to Linux because we needed an operating
system that was stable and reliable..."
Linux Foundation Training Prepares the International Space Station for Linux
Migration [ Reply to This | Parent | # ]
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Authored by: Anonymous on Thursday, March 28 2013 @ 10:16 AM EDT |
Anthony Lewis (March 27, 1927 – March 25, 2013) was a public intellectual and
journalist, twice winner of the Pulitzer Prize, and a longtime New York Times
columnist. He is credited with creating the field of legal journalism in the
United States. -
Wikipedia
---
Lewis would write in a book about
another aspect of constitutional law defamation that a 1919 Harvard Law Review
article by Harvard Professor Zechariah Chafee about “Freedom of Speech in War
Time” “may have been the best-timed law-review article ever published,” coming
as it did just ahead of the great free speech opinions of Justices Oliver
Wendell Holmes and Louis Brandeis. But Lewis’s own handiwork, published in 1958,
is certainly a contender for the same title. To a remarkable degree, Lewis set
the agenda, and established the arguments for all that was to follow.
And
what followed was a constitutional revolution.
Richard Tofel, Pro Publica[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]
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Authored by: Anonymous on Thursday, March 28 2013 @ 10:39 AM EDT |
FBI Pursuing Real-Time Gmail
Spying Powers as “Top
Priority” for 2013 [ Reply to This | Parent | # ]
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Authored by: Anonymous on Thursday, March 28 2013 @ 11:29 AM EDT |
Utah’s federal court system braces for cuts
Utah’s federal court system braces for cuts [ Reply to This | Parent | # ]
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Authored by: artp on Thursday, March 28 2013 @ 12:07 PM EDT |
I am having a terrible time satisfying my Groklaw cravings
today. Pages often don't load fully, or don't connect at
all.
Other Web sites are variable. National Weather Service,
Techdirt and GMail work fine. Amazon is variable like
Groklaw.
Don't know if this is Groklaw-specific or if it is fallout
from the SpamHaus DDOSing. I find it terribly ironic that
spammers are not only DDOSing a spam blacklist, but that
they have a public spokesman for the whole deal. What nerve!
I suppose I should be grateful that they aren't hiring a
lawyer and trying to drive SpamHaus out of business,
although that would be a more normal approach to the
problem.
---
Userfriendly on WGA server outage:
When you're chained to an oar you don't think you should go down when the galley
sinks ?[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]
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Authored by: Anonymous on Thursday, March 28 2013 @ 12:19 PM EDT |
Physics related - Just was watching a series of videos about;
T
he Primer Fields
at:
http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLI8-E8k8mrZdRmXzjBeK-EQmv8wPOIY9d
The claim of this discovery is;
"In this video series the currently
accepted theories of physics and astrophysics are shaken to the core by a
radical new theory of the fundamental forces in all matter".
It's
interesting, but is there anything to it, as claimed?
[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]
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Authored by: Anonymous on Thursday, March 28 2013 @ 12:29 PM EDT |
Swiss premium chocolate maker
Lindt & Spruengli has lost a
court battle to
protect its gold foil-wrapped Easter bunnies from imitation by
a
German rival.Lindt, which traces its origins to a Zurich confectionery
shop
set up in the 1840s, has been fighting German chocolate
maker Confiserie
Riegelein since 2000 to try to stop it
producing similar chocolate
bunnies. But Germany's Federal Court of Justice rejected a final
appeal by
Lindt & Spruengli on Thursday.
Emma Thomasson, Reuters[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]
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Authored by: Anonymous on Thursday, March 28 2013 @ 12:33 PM EDT |
Ope
n Patent
Non-Assertion Pledge
This is interesting. Any thoughts? [ Reply to This | Parent | # ]
|
- MS? Apple? - Authored by: Anonymous on Thursday, March 28 2013 @ 01:03 PM EDT
- I really like it - Authored by: Anonymous on Thursday, March 28 2013 @ 01:03 PM EDT
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Authored by: fredex on Thursday, March 28 2013 @ 01:52 PM EDT |
while I haven't been making a serious study, my recollection is that we haven't
had an article by Mark in some weeks. It's nice to see you back, Mark![ Reply to This | Parent | # ]
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Authored by: Anonymous on Thursday, March 28 2013 @ 01:56 PM EDT |
http://s.gullipics.com/image/e/3/z/hq2x3b-kmkmj8-j8dt/26621.png [ Reply to This | Parent | # ]
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Authored by: Anonymous on Thursday, March 28 2013 @ 02:10 PM EDT |
I'm having a brain fart moment and looking for clarification..
Is the idea of the first to file system that it should be harder to get a
patent? In other words, there will be more prior art available? Or does it
mean that someone filing for a patent can extort money out of others who have
been using a particular patented technique for years before the patent was
filed?
In other words, what is the perceived benefit of F2F over F2I?[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]
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Authored by: OpenSourceFTW on Thursday, March 28 2013 @ 03:56 PM EDT |
Now that Spring break has arrived, I am ready to get down to the business of
switching over to Linux.
I'm burning Fedora and Slackware install DVDs at this very moment.
Excited to finally put my "money" where my mouth is as a
pro-OpenSource guy.
That said, I do have to keep a small windows partition, but I'm going to see how
much I can avoid using it.
It's going to be a triple boot system, with Fedora as the primary OS, Slackware
as the experimental OS (so I can learn), and Windows 7 as the, well, other OS.
Some questions: Can I use the same swap partition for two different Linux
installs? I don't see why not, but does anybody know differently?
I also plan to have them share a /home partition. Is that a problem?[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]
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Authored by: Anonymous on Thursday, March 28 2013 @ 04:00 PM EDT |
"As venture capital firms feel the squeeze from new competitors, unsatisfied
investors, and stagnant markets, two of the industry’s biggest names could
finally have their performance data revealed to the public."
"A
California lawsuit from the news organization Reuters is threatening to expose
the performance records of Sequoia Capital and Kleiner Perkins Caufield &
Byers—Silicon Valley firms that are among the most well-known in the secretive
world of VC investing." link[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]
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Authored by: Anonymous on Thursday, March 28 2013 @ 04:37 PM EDT |
The International Business Times
has a story about how the Department of "Justice" is trying to expand the
Computer "Fraud" and "Abuse" Act in such a way as to allow them to harass
internet users with greater ease.
This is the same law that was used to
harass the late Mr. Araon Swartz. Rather than admit that what they did to Mr.
Swartz is wrong, they would rather change the law to make what they did the new
standard operating procedure. These people have no soul.[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]
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Authored by: Anonymous on Thursday, March 28 2013 @ 05:48 PM EDT |
"The provision protects genetically modified seeds from litigation in the
face of health risks and has thus been dubbed the “Monsanto Protection Act” by
activists who oppose the biotech giant. President Barack Obama signed the
spending bill, including the provision, into law on Tuesday" link
`The "Monsanto Protection Act" effectively bars
federal courts from being able to halt the sale or planting of controversial
genetically modified (aka GMO) or genetically engineered (GE) seeds, no matter
what health issues may arise concerning GMOs in the future' link
"Sec. 735. In the event that
a determination of non-regulated status .. been invalidated .. the Secretary of
Agriculture shall .. immediately grant temporary permit(s) .. while ensuring
that growers or other users are able to move, plant, cultivate, introduce [GM
CROPS] into commerce" link[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]
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Authored by: hardmath on Thursday, March 28 2013 @ 07:02 PM EDT |
Note that this Uniloc lawsuit is different from the one
filed in Sept. 2012
by
PersonalWeb Technologies.
Googling around I did not find anything
significant after
the response by Rackspace as far as the progress of this
other East Texas District litigation.
--- Recursion is the
opprobrium of the mathists. [ Reply to This | Parent | # ]
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Authored by: Anonymous on Thursday, March 28 2013 @ 07:30 PM EDT |
Journalists are missing one of the biggest stories in America: the
saga of how new laws and regulations are promoting monopolies, duopolies and
oligopolies, to the massive detriment of consumers.
Telling this story
doesn't require serious investigative skills or sophisticated computer-assisted
reporting. All you have to do is cover the nuts and bolts. Many of the most
important changes are made at regulatory agencies, which generally receive scant
coverage even though their decisions affect prices, the quality of goods and
services, and taxes.
[...]
Journalists who want to grab readers by their
wallets, who want to make their stories so valuable that people pay attention
need only make one change in how they report the news: Balance business news
coverage focused on the minority of people who are investors with the viewpoint
of the majority of people who are customers.
David Cay Johnston, American
Journalism Review[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]
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Authored by: Anonymous on Thursday, March 28 2013 @ 09:12 PM EDT |
Lauren's and Bob's
recent posts brought to mind a theme that keeps cropping up in my teaching and
research: public authorities increasingly offloading responsibility for
important justice-related issues, especially consumer justice, to the private
sector.
On the teaching side, I teach Civil Procedure, and that world is
all abuzz with talk of a slew of recent Supreme Court and Court of Appeals
opinions that have prioritized private arbitration over public adjudication of
disputes (see, e.g., here and here).
And this movement is afoot not only in
the classic context of complex business disputes, where arbitration makes some
sense; rather, it has taken hold in David-and-Goliath situations involving
important rights like employment contracts and consumer sales and service
contracts of a variety of kinds.
Jason Kilborn, Credit Slips[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]
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Authored by: Anonymous on Thursday, March 28 2013 @ 09:44 PM EDT |
Another look at the accuracy of cellphone tracking
nature.com
[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]
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Authored by: Gringo_ on Friday, March 29 2013 @ 07:23 AM EDT |
This is absolutely
fascinating, and very well documented, with
videos: The
largest computer ever built: the "Semi-Automatic Ground
Environment" or SAGE system...
Each of the 27 computers that
made up the
system was a dual core 32 bit CPU made of 60,000 vacuum
tubes
175,000 diodes, and 12,000 of those newfangled
transistors. Memory: 256k of
magnetic core RAM (invented for
this project) clocking in every 6 microseconds.
These things
weighed 300 tons, consumed 3 megawatts of electrical power
and
ran a blistering 75,000 operations per second. The dual
cores weren’t used for
multiprocessing. One was kept on hot
standby in case the other failed.The SAGE
system started
running in 1958, and didn’t stop until 1984.
No doubt it was the sheer scale of this system that
inspired science
fiction of the day to speculate on fears
that the machine could achieve
consciousness, with
devastating consequences. We would laugh today if someone
suggested a machine with a core of 256k of RAM could do
that, yet continue to
be dazzled by machines like Watson. No
doubt Watson will appear just as
primitive to generations of
the future. [ Reply to This | Parent | # ]
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Authored by: Gringo_ on Friday, March 29 2013 @ 07:29 AM EDT |
Microsoft's Windows Blue update to Windows 8
makes it
increasingly clear that Microsoft wants to kill the
Desktop. That may seem
self-defeating, but there's method in
Microsoft's madness. Here are three
reasons I think it wants
to eventually kill the Desktop.
A
quick and easy read, this
article summarzies what I have been saying
all along,
only I would add: Blue, whatever that initiative involves,
will be
too late. Microsoft has missed the window of
opportunity, and Blue will be like
locking the barn door
after the horses have already gone. There is no reason to
believe people will want to migrate en mass to Microsoft's
Metro OS.
[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]
|
- Three reasons Microsoft wants to kill the Windows Desktop - Authored by: JamesK on Friday, March 29 2013 @ 11:09 AM EDT
- Got to remember something - Authored by: Anonymous on Friday, March 29 2013 @ 11:20 AM EDT
- Three reasons Microsoft wants to kill the Windows Desktop - Authored by: Anonymous on Friday, March 29 2013 @ 03:10 PM EDT
- Correct destination, but wrong direction to get there - Authored by: ailuromancy on Saturday, March 30 2013 @ 12:44 AM EDT
- And? - Authored by: Anonymous on Saturday, March 30 2013 @ 05:48 AM EDT
- I love LXDE (fast, simple, stable), and would use it on portable device... - Authored by: Anonymous on Saturday, March 30 2013 @ 08:18 AM EDT
- camera + phone in your pockets? - Authored by: Anonymous on Monday, April 01 2013 @ 05:34 PM EDT
- The problem with that theory - Authored by: Anonymous on Friday, March 29 2013 @ 03:55 PM EDT
- my impression is... - Authored by: sumzero on Saturday, March 30 2013 @ 11:05 AM EDT
- Computing - Authored by: Ian Al on Saturday, March 30 2013 @ 12:09 PM EDT
- Computing - Authored by: Anonymous on Saturday, March 30 2013 @ 04:43 PM EDT
- your not alone.... - Authored by: dacii on Saturday, March 30 2013 @ 04:48 PM EDT
- Computing - Authored by: Anonymous on Monday, April 01 2013 @ 12:05 PM EDT
- Computing - Authored by: Anonymous on Monday, April 01 2013 @ 05:14 PM EDT
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Authored by: JamesK on Friday, March 29 2013 @ 10:05 AM EDT |
A 12-page
decision that stems from an alleged Highway Traffic Act offence is quite the
entertaining page turner. --- The following program contains immature
subject matter.
Viewer discretion is advised. [ Reply to This | Parent | # ]
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Authored by: JamesK on Friday, March 29 2013 @ 10:17 AM EDT |
A Winnipeg judge who put a tardy
juror in jail for an afternoon has let her off with a warning. --- The
following program contains immature subject matter.
Viewer discretion is advised. [ Reply to This | Parent | # ]
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Authored by: Anonymous on Friday, March 29 2013 @ 10:31 PM EDT |
The 1400 letters exchanged between Darwin and Joseph Dalton Hooker
(1817-1911) account for around 10% of Darwin’s surviving correspondence and
provide a structure within which all the other letters can be explored.
They
are a connecting thread that spans forty years of Darwin’s mature working life
from 1843 until his death in 1882 and bring into sharp focus every aspect of
Darwin’s scientific work throughout that period. They illuminate the mutual
friendships he and Hooker shared with other scientists, but they also provide a
window of unparalleled intimacy into the personal lives of the two
men.
http://www.darwinproject.ac.uk/darwin-hooker-letters[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]
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Authored by: Anonymous on Friday, March 29 2013 @ 10:53 PM EDT |
Timothy Taylor Is "Intellectual Property" a Misnomer?
Maggie Koerth-Baker Do GMOs yield more food? The answer is in the
semantics
Carol Goar Three distasteful buzzwords
have crept into the language, confusing Canadians and stifling public debate [ Reply to This | Parent | # ]
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Authored by: Anonymous on Saturday, March 30 2013 @ 03:11 PM EDT |
U.S. District Court Judge Denise Cote took over the case in December, 2011, and
quickly made a series of rulings in the case, first denying a motion by the
banks to dismiss the lawsuit. The bank lawyers have become so dissatisfied with
Cote’s rulings, in fact, that they have asked the Second Circuit to reverse
them. The filing calls for a “writ of mandamus” that would throw out a series of
rulings around discovery, which the bank lawyers claim “deprived Petitioners of
their right to obtain evidence.” (You can chew for a moment on the idea that
banks are being deprived of their rights.)
One Judge to rule on them all [ Reply to This | Parent | # ]
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Authored by: Anonymous on Saturday, March 30 2013 @ 06:35 PM EDT |
How fast do quantum interactions happen? Faster than light, 10,000 times
faster.
That's what a team of physicists led by Juan Yin at the University
of Science and Technology of China in Shanghai found in an experiment involving
entangled photons, or photons that remain intimately connected, even when
separated by vast distances.They wanted to see what would happen if you tried
assigning a speed to what Einstein called "spooky action at a
distance."
They didn't find anything unexpected, but that wasn't the point:
in physics, sometimes it's good to be sure.
Jesse Emspak, NBC
10,000x light
speed is about warp factor 9.9
what do photons weigh at those g-forces?
would the photons create their own cavitation black holes? [ Reply to This | Parent | # ]
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Authored by: Nick_UK on Sunday, March 31 2013 @ 04:27 AM EDT |
Oh to be an astronaut.
Earth at night
Nick[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]
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Authored by: Anonymous on Sunday, March 31 2013 @ 05:12 AM EDT |
This story came to my attention this morning.
What is it Apple is
trying to trademark? The "Mini" suffix to stop others using it, because the
article says (implies) that the iPad mini was launched last November (2012), yet
a year ago (April 2012 - some 6 months earlier) I changed my phone to a Samsung
Galaxy Ace and my Wife changed hers (at the same time) to a Samsung "Galaxy
Mini" - a smaller version of the "Galaxy" phone.
Are Apple
just copying (surely NOT, Apple NEVER copies [sic]) Samsung (who use the
designation with an Android device) in the use of "Mini"? And then
want to stop Samsung using it? [ Reply to This | Parent | # ]
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Authored by: Anonymous on Monday, April 01 2013 @ 03:45 AM EDT |
Slightly
misleading title to article but still [ Reply to This | Parent | # ]
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Authored by: Ian Al on Monday, April 01 2013 @ 06:37 AM EDT |
While making another comment I rediscovered this in a USPTO
Guideline.(i) Safe Harbors
-
Independent Physical Acts
(Post-Computer Process Activity)
A process is statutory if it
requires physical acts to be
performed outside the computer independent of and
following the
steps to be performed by a programmed computer, where those
acts
involve the manipulation of tangible physical objects and result
in the
object having a different physical attribute or structure. Thus, if a process
claim includes one or more post-
computer process steps that result in a
physical transformation
outside the computer (beyond merely conveying the direct
result
of the computer operation,
see Section IV.B.2(d)(iii)), the claim
is
clearly statutory.
Examples of this type of statutory process include
the
following:
A method of curing rubber in a mold which relies
upon
updating process parameters, using a computer processor to
determine a time
period for curing the rubber, using the computer processor to determine when the
time period has been reached in the curing process and then opening the mold at
that stage.
A method of controlling a mechanical robot which relies
upon
storing data in a computer that represents various types of
mechanical movements
of the robot, using a computer processor to
calculate positioning of the robot
in relation to given tasks to
be performed by the robot, and controlling the
robot's movement
and position based on the calculated
position.
The first example is a summary of the successful Diehr
court case. However, the description echoes a previous comment of macliam that
the invention is very close to the failed Flook invention. It is only that the
computer uses a range setting algorithm and follows through to directly control
the machinery that saves it.
How about the second example? §100 says
that methods are included in the definition of process. §101 says that the post
process activity must be significant and useful. This method does not produce a
manufacture or composition of matter. Its post process activity is making a
robot move. It is not a particular robot and the movement is abstract. For the
post process activity to be other than abstract, their would have to be a
non-abstract set of robot commands and a non-abstract relationship of computer
data manipulation and the movement of the robot achieving a specific useful
result.
I'm afraid that a computer processor 'imparting spherical
seismic energy waves into the earth from a seismic source' and 'converting the
spherical seismic energy waves into electrical signals which provide a
geophysical representation of formations below the earth's surface' are too far
above my pay grade to comment on. However, it is beyond dispute that
'geophysical exploration of formations below the surface of the earth has real
world value'. I'm just not sure that this invention does that and fits the §101
requirement for 'new and useful'. It's not as if seismic wave geophysical
testing is new or that computers have not been used for the abstract
representation of all sorts of test data in the past. If Flook stands for the
rejection of a load of activities brought together in a non-novel way to do a
job, why is this any different?
Manipulation of Data
Representing Physical Objects or
Activities (Pre-Computer Process
Activity)
Another statutory process is one that requires
the
measurements of physical objects or activities to be transformed outside of
the computer into computer data,
where the data comprises signals corresponding
to physical objects or activities external to the computer system, and where the
process causes a physical transformation of the signals which are intangible
representations of the physical objects or activities.
Examples of this
type of claimed statutory process include
the
following:
...
A method of using a computer processor
to receive data
representing Computerized Axial Tomography ("CAT") scan images
of a patient, performing a calculation to determine the difference between a
local value at a data point and an average value of the data in a region
surrounding the point, and displaying the difference as a gray scale for each
point in the image, and displaying the resulting image. In this example the data
is an intangible representation of a physical object,
i.e., portions of the
anatomy of a patient. The transformation occurs when the condition of the human
body is measured with X-rays and the X-rays are converted into electrical
digital signals that represent the condition of the human body. The real world
value of the invention lies in creating a new CAT scan image of body tissue
without the presence of bones.
A method of using a computer
processor to conduct seismic
exploration, by imparting spherical seismic energy
waves into the earth from a seismic source, generating a plurality of reflected
signals in response to the seismic energy waves at a set of receiver positions
in an array, and summing the reflection signals to produce a signal simulating
the reflection response of the earth to the seismic energy. In this example, the
electrical signals processed by the computer represent reflected seismic energy.
The transformation occurs by converting the spherical seismic energy waves into
electrical signals which provide a geophysical representation of formations
below the earth's surface. Geophysical exploration of formations below the
surface of the earth has real world value.
If a claim does not clearly
fall into one or both of the
safe harbors, the claim may still be statutory if
it is limited
by the language in the claim to a practical application in
the
technological arts.
This introduces a new technical concept on
how a computer and other stuff works and also a new legal definition of the word
'useful'. The commentary uses the phrase 'The real world value of the
invention'. In other words, the invention does not have to be useful to be
statutory: it just needs to have a real world value. The method of printing a
book has a real world value because it gives us books to read in the real
world.
The new technology is that 'The transformation occurs when the
condition of the human body is measured with X-rays and the X-ray measurements
are converted into electrical digital signals that represent the condition of
the human body.' Measuring the human body with X-rays is a significant novelty
in its own right, but the crucial step is transforming those measurements into
digital signals representing the human condition. This is a far cry from
patenting the formula E=mc2
( i.e., the relationship between energy
and mass). That has no patentable real world value.
(ii)
Computer-Related Processes Limited to a Practical
Application in the
Technological Arts
There is always some form of physical
transformation
within a computer because a computer acts on signals
and
transforms them during its operation and changes the state of its components
during the execution of a process. Even though such a physical transformation
occurs within a computer, such activity is not determinative of whether the
process is statutory because such transformation alone does not distinguish a
statutory computer process from a non-statutory computer process. What is
determinative is not how the computer performs the process, but what the
computer does to achieve a practical application.
A process that merely
manipulates an abstract idea or
performs a purely mathematical algorithm is
non-statutory despite the fact that it might inherently have some
usefulness.
For such subject matter to be statutory, the claimed
process must be limited to a practical application of the abstract idea or
mathematical algorithm in the technological arts.
For example,
a
computer process that simply calculates a mathematical
algorithm that models
noise is non-statutory. However, a claimed
process for digitally filtering noise
employing the mathematical
algorithm is statutory.
Examples of this
type of claimed statutory process include
the following:
A
computerized method of optimally controlling transfer,
storage and retrieval of
data between cache and hard disk storage devices such that the most frequently
used data is readily available.
A method of controlling parallel
processors to accomplish
multi-tasking of several computing tasks to maximize
computing efficiency.
A method of making a word processor by storing an
executable
word processing application program in a general purpose
digital
computer's memory, and executing the stored program to impart
word
processing functionality to the general purpose digital
computer by changing the
state of the computer's arithmetic logic unit when program instructions of the
word processing program are executed.
A digital filtering process
for removing noise from a
digital signal comprising the steps of calculating a
mathematical algorithm to produce a correction signal and subtracting the
correction signal from the digital signal to remove the
noise.
This is another revelation about how computers work. In the
previous section we learn how bodies are measured by X-rays and then the
measurements are transformed into digital signals which are sent to the computer
for it to display as the human condition. Here is a new concept whereby the
computer, itself, transforms the real world into digital signals and then
manipulates the real world signals in a way that provides real world value. In
one example, the computer transforms noise sound waves into analogue electrical
noise sound wave signals and then to digital noise sound wave signals. The
patented process is the calculation of a mathematical algorithm to remove the
digital noise sound wave signals thus providing real world value. The
description is silent on how anyone in the real world gets any value. Perhaps
the removed noise sound wave signals are not transformed back into non-airwaves
for people not to hear. Hey, but, don't let me minimise the substantial advance
in math science of being able to calculate algorithms.
I'm a bit more
worried about the word processor example. It uses the words 'executing the
stored program to impart word processing functionality to the general purpose
digital computer by changing the state of the computer's arithmetic logic unit
when program instructions of the word processing program are executed'. That
does not sound right to me. I thought that the state of the ALU was unchanged as
are all the other parts of the processor that computes the algorithmic steps
that 'execute the programs'.
(c) Non-Statutory Process
Claims
If the "acts" of a claimed process manipulate only
numbers, abstract
concepts or ideas, or signals representing any
of the foregoing, the acts are
not being applied to appropriate
subject matter. Thus, a process consisting
solely of
mathematical operations,
i.e., converting one set of numbers
into another set of numbers, does not manipulate appropriate subject matter and
thus cannot constitute a statutory process.
In practical terms, claims
define non-statutory processes if they:
consist solely of mathematical
operations without some claimed practical application ( i.e., executing a
"mathematical algorithm"); or simply manipulate abstract ideas, e.g., a bid or
a bubble hierarchy, without some claimed practical application.
A
claimed process that consists solely of mathematical
operations is non-statutory
whether or not it is performed on a
computer. Courts have recognized a
distinction between types of
mathematical algorithms, namely, some define a "law
of nature" in mathematical terms and others merely describe an "abstract
idea."Certain mathematical algorithms have been held to be non-
statutory
because they represent a mathematical definition of a
law of nature or a natural
phenomenon. For example, a mathematical algorithm representing the formula E=mc
is a "law of nature"--it defines a "fundamental scientific truth" ( i.e., the
relationship between energy and mass). To comprehend how the law of nature
relates to any object, one invariably has to perform certain steps ( e.g.,
multiplying a number representing the mass of an object by the square of a
number representing the speed of light). In such a case, a claimed process which
consists solely of the steps that one must follow to solve the mathematical
representation of E=mc is indistinguishable from the law of nature and would
"preempt" the law of nature. A patent cannot be granted on such a
process.
Other mathematical algorithms have been held to be
non-
statutory because they merely describe an abstract idea. An
"abstract idea"
may simply be any sequence of mathematical
operations that are combined to solve
a mathematical problem.
The concern addressed by holding such subject matter
non-statutory is that the mathematical operations merely describe an
idea and do
not define a process that represents a practical
application of the
idea.
Accordingly, when a claim reciting a mathematical algorithm is
found to define non-statutory subject matter the basis of the § 101 rejection
must be that, when taken as a whole, the claim recites a law of nature, a
natural phenomenon, or an abstract idea.
It seems to me that the
claimed statutory parts of this piece are based on the knowledge that computers
are magic and are capable of any function of real world value. If they ever
discover that computers only manipulate signs and that the computer's state is
not changed by execution a program then they will have a lot of redrafting to
do. They also have to disabuse themselves of the idea that computers can suck in
real world things like the human condition and sound waves and manipulate those
real things in a way that has real world value. When all these are gone, all
they have left is 'converting one set of numbers into another set of numbers,
does not manipulate appropriate subject matter and thus cannot constitute a
statutory process'.
--- Regards
Ian Al
Software Patents: It's the disclosed functions in the patent, stupid! [ Reply to This | Parent | # ]
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Authored by: Anonymous on Monday, April 01 2013 @ 07:40 AM EDT |
The Swiss pharmaceutical giant has fought a
legal battle in India
since 2006 to patent a new version of
Glivec, which is mainly used to treat
leukemia and is known
as Gleevec outside India and Europe. The earlier version
of
Glivec did not have a patent, because it was introduced into
India before
the country adopted its first patent law in
2005.
India's patent office
rejected the company's patent
application, arguing the drug was not a new
medicine but an
amended version of its earlier product. The patent authority
cited a provision in the 2005 patent law aimed at preventing
companies from
getting fresh patents for making only minor
changes to existing medicines — a
practice known as
"evergreening."
Novartis appealed, arguing the drug was a
more easily
absorbed version of Glivec and that it qualified for a
patent.
CBC[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]
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Authored by: Anonymous on Monday, April 01 2013 @ 07:45 AM EDT |
should this be allowed?
yet another phone shape patent [ Reply to This | Parent | # ]
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Authored by: JamesK on Monday, April 01 2013 @ 11:46 AM EDT |
There’s a
good reason Dell (DELL) wants to go private and back out of the traditional PC
business: Because it thinks selling computers based on Microsoft’s (MSFT)
Windows operating system is quickly becoming a dead end. --- The
following program contains immature subject matter.
Viewer discretion is advised. [ Reply to This | Parent | # ]
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Authored by: Anonymous on Monday, April 01 2013 @ 11:52 AM EDT |
The message that the era of the PC is coming to a close comes from a
company at the heart of the industry – Dell.
In a proxy statement
submitted to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission relating to the
company’s plans to go private, the company outlines, in very clear language,
that the PC train has hit the buffers.
Outlines are the “various risks
and uncertainties related to continued ownership of Common Stock,” and it makes
scary reading for anyone operating within the industry, or who holds stock in
the company.
Adrian Kingsley-Hughes, Forbes[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]
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Authored by: Anonymous on Monday, April 01 2013 @ 04:18 PM EDT |
"With the obsessive neatness that goes with the beginning of a
project," [Bruce Chatwin]
wrote, "I made three neat stacks of my 'Paris'
notebooks. In France, these notebooks are known as carnets
moleskines:
'moleskine', in this case, being its black oilcloth binding. Each time I went to
Paris, I would
buy a fresh supply from a papeterie in the Rue de
l'Ancienne-Comédie."
Skeuomorphism? Phooeymorphism!
guardian.co.uk
[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]
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Authored by: Anonymous on Monday, April 01 2013 @ 05:53 PM EDT |
In the 1970s, the owners of Parker Brothers, General Mills, sued an
economics professor for marketing a parody game called Anti-Monopoly. The suit
was rejected on appeal when it was realized that the original game of Monopoly
was, in fact, stolen.
Business Careers Guide
---
be interesting to see
that appeal decision [ Reply to This | Parent | # ]
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