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The example often touted | 225 comments | Create New Account
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The example often touted
Authored by: mbouckaert on Monday, May 20 2013 @ 02:10 PM EDT
I think that the point made here was that the Fraunhofer
patent is software + psychoacoustics, or (maths) + (human
body interaction). The maths alone would not make it a
product. Maybe it doesn't work with green little men who
would find the result of MP3 compress/decompress horribly
distorted. What the discovery was, was that *humans* do not
perceive (much of) the difference.

So it's not IMHO pure math.

Disregarding for a mo' that there was prior art, would such
an item (math + something) qualify ?

Where is the limit - how little / how much of the "physical
world" is needed to distance the putatively-patentable
product from an abstract unpatentable mathematical algorithm
?

We appear to agree that the process of curing rubber with
the help of computer-implemented algorithms qualifies as
patentable, even if the algorithms used do not.

How about this MP3 thingy ? Neuron-wired human
interpretation is part of the product -- or is it ?

How about Quiksort ? Time is a physical commodity. (Yes,
this is pushing; it just is a reminder that software *is*
while a running program *does*)

Cheers,

Etc.

---
bck

[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]

The example often touted
Authored by: Anonymous on Monday, May 20 2013 @ 10:01 PM EDT
If you know medieval Hebrew, and read the appropriate Hebrew
texts, then RSA is so obvious to one that is not a specialist in the field
of cryptology, that you have to question how the USPTO defines
"prior art, and "obviousness".

I'll grant that it is a 17th century document that refers to that
medieval Hebrew manuscript for encryption purposes, rather than
the medieval Hebrew manuscript itself. Still, that doesn't lessen the
obviousness of the algorithm.

[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]

The example often touted
Authored by: Anonymous on Tuesday, May 21 2013 @ 07:12 AM EDT
COMMERCIAL use predated the patent by seven years, but it was a spook's trade secret ... (and again, it was OUR trade secret :-)

I'm not familiar enough with RSA and its history to even have an opinion on whether it ought to be patentable. But the trade secret thing is kind of part of the point of patents - we'll give you exclusivity in return for disclosing the invention to the public. If you'd rather keep it a secret, fine - but then we won't give you a monopoly on it. If you don't publish it, you run the risk that someone else will come along and eat your lunch for you.

[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]

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