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Authored by: rcsteiner on Friday, April 12 2013 @ 06:25 PM EDT |
That's certainly true in the software universe.
Most software inventions aren't published, either, since a huge chunk is written
for personal or internal corporate use, and much of the rest is part of the
proprietary software universe.
Patenting algorithms is much like patenting the individual shapes and colors of
Lego(tm) blocks. You simply cannot build a larger software system without using
dozens or hundreds of smaller solutions, and many of those solutions are
blindingly obvious to a person skilled in programming when the problem at hand
is initially defined.
"Oh, look, there's a 2x2 hole in this red brick wall. I need to create a
2x2 square red block to fit here!" :-)
Sadly, a "software-style patent" on legos would have a tendency to
patent "...a method for filling a hole using one or more shapes of varying
colors..." rather than "a red 4x4 block", meaning someone who
wanted to fill that hole using four 1x1 yellow blocks or even a white 2x2 window
would also be potentially in violation... :-(
---
-Rich Steiner >>>---> Mableton, GA USA
The Theorem Theorem: If If, Then Then.[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]
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