Supreme Court Rules Software Patents Invalid-Without Ever Mentioning Software Once In the Decision
"What this means is that companies like Apple, IBM, Microsoft, Google and others have had the value of their patent portfolios nearly completely erased today. If they wish to remain compliant with Sarbanes Oxley and other laws and regulations of the Securities and Exchange Commission they will need to level with their shareholders and tell them that their patent portfolios have been decimated."
db is on a plane headed to the Atlas Summit to give a talk about Galt as Inventor. When he gets off the plane, this news will greet him. Imagine a MODERN patent system understanding the manufacturing age but not the information age....
db is on a plane headed to the Atlas Summit to give a talk about Galt as Inventor. When he gets off the plane, this news will greet him. Imagine a MODERN patent system understanding the manufacturing age but not the information age....
Previous comments...
http://www.kleinbottle.com/
http://downlo.tumblr.com/post/5407988460...
http://www.sciencemuseum.org.uk/images/I...
As for my not listening, you have posted quite a few words. I searched for "object" in this discussion and found all of the relevant occurrences. By "object result" you mean physical. A Klein bottle is a real, physical expression of a mathematical idea. Computer software is not. Software is just more mathematics.
Moreover, it is indeed repeatable. You threw that in but I am not sure why. Also any competent patent examiner should know which mathematical proofs are non-obvious, just as they know so much about everything else, apparently.
I think that our problem - certainly mine - that you have never made a clear, complete and consistent statement, but just reply piecewise to each post making cogent points perhaps but in the midst of ad hominem attacks, calling your opponents socialists and anarchists. Even if we were, that would not change the content of our statements.
It makes me wonder if you ever actually argue in court (and win).
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Posted by dbhalling 21 hours, 5 minutes ago
Define Abstract. By definition an invention is an abstraction, just as the word humans is an abstraction that classifies a number of specific instances.
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Posted by $ Zenphamy 13 hours, 56 minutes ago It may be an improvement upon a machine or product, or a new process for creating an object or a result.
Posted by dbhalling 13 hours, 31 minutes ago
Alice was clearly new. Meaning no one had created this combination. It had an objective result and therefore it was an invention.
Posted by dbhalling 21 hours, 51 minutes ago
Mike, You are impervious to logic. An invention is a human creation with an objective result (repeatable). An inventor is the first person to create an invention. Property rights are based on creation. Thus patents are property right that recognized the inventor's creation of an invention, just like all property rights. That is OBJECTIVE AND RATIONAL
Posted by dbhalling 21 hours, 38 minutes ago
Stealing other people's work is the definition of a moocher.
Patents are not inherently based on subjective criteria. An invention is a human creation with a objective result. An inventor is the first person to create an invention. Property rights are the law recognizing that creation. Patents are just property rights in inventions. This is objective and logical.
Non-obviousness is subjective, has nothing to do with patents and was one of the first examples of Judicial activism. You want to make patents objective get rid of the non-obviousness requirement.
Posted by dbhalling 53 minutes ago
Mike you are not listening. An invention is a human creation with an object result. Mathematics does not have an objective result, it is just descriptive.
Not every design of an implementation of something with an "objective result" is patentable either, just like purely mechanical machines.
More clarification is necessary, philosophically and legally, about the role of software in patentable devices.
Why do you say purely mechanical machines are not patentable?
Once you understand that software is just a way of wiring an electronic circuit most of the problems fall away. One other confusion is that in patent law we do not explain well known components. So we do not explain how to make a compiler for instance, if we are using a standard well known compiler.
Software is not a "way of wiring an electronic circuit". It controls the different states of a fixed, physical circuit when it is run on the computer. But it is the specific software that does that when loaded into the computer. An algorithm is abstract knowledge and cannot do anything until someone implements it by coding it in a specific way.
At this moment, the computer upon which I am typing has, in its ram, a specific pattern of information. By your argument, I could patent every moment I use this machine, as the pattern changes, because your argument is that I am "rewiring" the machine from moment to moment. (most of the good work being done by the MMU, granted...)
Once you understand the difference between hardware and software, then we can talk.
By objective result, I mean one that is repeatable and has the same result independent of the observer. See the incandescent light bulb.
Art is a human creation that has a subjective result. See Atlas Shrugged. It does not do anything on its own, and depends on the observers reaction. The movie AS III is a work of art, but it used inventions to create it.
No idea does anything "on its own". Some person has to understand it in his mind and apply it.
Software is not all about mathematics. Some of it is calculation and some isn't. Even when it is mathematical software it an encoding of an algorithm in a specific way following additional rules required to get the computer to follow specific steps in a specific way, analogous to doing arithmetic with paper and pencil following 'mechanical' rules as opposed to thinking what the numbers and operations mean as concepts and principles.
What does this have to do with art?
A light bulb puts out light by itself when the correct electrical signal is applied.
The design of a light bulb doesn't do anything by itself either. It is the specific way a light bulb is designed that might be patented, not a particular light bulb. Even a particular light bulb doesn't work "by itself". It is designed to function with a specific range of current and voltage, which must then be supplied for it to work.
The explanations you are trying to give here to characterize patents are not working and not properly describing and distinguishing the subject matter you are addressing.
If you're going to argue that there must be a physical manifestation in order to classify something as patentable, you are going to severely undermine your own argument as to software patents...
If "applied mathematics" were patentable, you would first have to distinguish what you mean by that from "pure mathematics", since it is all mathematics and there is a large body of theoretical material in "applied mathematics". That knowledge is also hierarchical, as it must be as abstract knowledge. Requiring patent fees to use any parts of it in further thinking and use of theory and algorithms would subject most of what is published and known about mathematics to patent litigation just for thinking correctly in mathematics, economics, science and engineering. The nightmare of lawyers intruding in everything would destroy all science. The ambulance chasers would be in their glory until the parasites had nothing to feed off. The slip-N-fallers would be envious and none of it would be done on behalf of property rights.
When a cryptographic method has been patented, it is the use of the mathematics that is prohibited without a license from being implemented for cryptography, not a particular computer program or even a specific set of algorithms used for the program. That is what the battle over pgp was about. If that is to be defended it will take more than saying mathematics doesn't do anything by itself.
Software is a way of wiring an electronic circuit - it is NOT MATH.
You also make another fundamentally incorrect conclusion: that it is the circuits that make something "patentable". If so, NO software qualifies as patentable. The whole reason you build computers is to allow one to change those circuits or pathways on the fly in response to other conditions! The "circuits" you are talking about in software don't exist for longer than it takes to execute a single instruction before moving on!
I am left to shake my head in shock. It is all I can do.
There are also some serious terminology problems here. Software does not create or change "circuits". The circuits are printed on the boards and remain fixed. As a program runs, it sequentially directs changes in the states of the devices as defined by the voltages in the switching circuits.
When a program is run on a different computer with a different OS the circuits are not necessarily the same, but the interpretation of the states must be. So software is more abstract than a particular hardware implementation.
A good book for you to read that elaborates on how this works in both the logic and the solid state physics is The Feynman Lectures on Computation. With your background you would have no trouble understanding it and would find it very interesting the way Feynman explains it and puts it all together (and some of it you will already be familiar with)..
With regards to circuits, yes, the hardware-based circuits do not change according to software, but only a fraction of what is there is actually in use at any given time. The circuits as a whole do not change, but the software directly manipulates WHICH parts (paths) of the circuits are active at any given time, and it is the sequence of activation of the circuits that gives instructions for processing and eventually ends up with output that is useful. Hardware is a tool - a VERY complex tool with lots of possibilities, but without the software (instructions for use), it is a very expensive paperweight. Just as software by itself is digital noise if it has no method of execution.
My primary point to dbhalling is that he/she is attempting to contend that only the hardware is patentable. My contention is that neither can be separated from the other without rendering the other useless. As a practical example, I would challenge someone to create a hardware-based database - my professional forte.
Actually, the whole purpose of s/w is to create a circuit. The s/w is does nothing by itself, it is the circuit that does the real work. Like so many CS people your lack of engineering shows you really don't even know what your are doing.Anything done is sw can be done in hardware, but not vice versa.
The arrogance of presumption on your part in absolute and total opposition to the evidence is shocking - and most especially to someone who claims to place primacy of fact as the pinnacle of one's personal philosophy. I leave you to your own devices.
While the number of 9-0 rulings has grown, the number of 5-4 decisions has shrunk — even though the court has five justices named by Republican presidents and four by Democrats. Only eight cases have come out that way so far; last term, there were 23. - http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/polit...
But 9 named by progressives...