Did it ever, under US law?

Whether or not a particular cryptographic method ought to be patentable, mathematics like calculus and the theory of finite fields underlying elliptic curve cryptography is theoretical knowledge. You can't require that people not think in correct mathematical principles.

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.

Mathematics is "descriptive" of what? Mathematics is a science of method, not like physics describing and explaining physical reality. The "descriptions" in mathematics are principles of methods and abstract relationships. Those are objective results, but not physical results. Do it again and you get exactly the same answer independently of who does it, in the proofs and in the algorithms. It isn't subjective.

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?

I can't follow that first sentence.

It's not even clear to me from the articles exactly what this particular patent was specifically claimed to be for, so I don't know what methods claimed to be previously commonly used were involved.

They play into socialist hands inevitably, but often not intentionally. When they deny some broad category of property rights it is worse, and even if they don't intend it to be across the board socialism, they are advocating collectivism in that one realm at least.

There have been many examples of software patents -- whether granted or being argued or fought over -- which would be ridiculous to patent. They are typically routine application of general methods, or ordinary techniques that came out of non-commercial research or obvious applications that almost anyone would do in the course of his work, without thought of patenting it, but which someone claims to have temporal priority over and "proven" only because no one else was bothering to keep records of such an "invention" because no one else thought of it that way or would have thought to exclude others from independently doing the same thing.

I am reacting only to commonly cited examples, some of which we see here on this page, not as someone who would know how to evaluate claims under current law. I'm not opposing intellectual property rights, but rather find that important proper principles defining them for software (except perhaps for copyrights or trade secrets) are not easy, and I can see how not getting it right can violate the property rights for a lot of people excluded from use of their own routine independent work as well as those with legitimate inventions that ought to be patentable.

Theoretical means true as a principle, which has a specific objective result only when applied. The same is true for software in general -- you have to run the program for a particular case to get a result, but the algorithmic method employed isn't itself patentable in that form alone, it has to be necessary for some patentable physical process.

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.

Then when someone rejects his assertion, "down voting" it, he pleads for sympathy, whining that he is losing "points" -- as if that matters -- and has the nerve to claim it is because someone is "voting down all his posts regardless of content". He won't admit that it is precisely his "content" that is the problem.

Hiraghm, that clearly does not follow.

Really "Alice simply took pre-existing information (numbers and identifiers)/" No what is arguing is metaphysical impossibilities. The argue is outrageous and absurd and just an excuse to steal other people's property.

Once someone lets faith in as a method of thinking that tends to happen.

You stridently display your ignorance and your inability to follow simple logic. Gee there appears to be a pattern. You did the same thing with your ignorance of EM. You are not objectivist, you do not understand or practice logic and reason, you are just emoting all of this site.

The libertarians do not understand property rights. They play into the socialist hands, so I stand by my criticism.

Name an overly broad patent. How do you determine if it is overly broad? Do you know how to read and interpret claims?

It is not that it is theoretical, it is that it does not have an objective result.

I agree that mathematics, as theoretical knowledge of method, should not be patentable. When software is only a "mechanistic" version of the calculation as opposed to paper in pencil it should not be either. The question is how to relate software to specific implementations of physical devices in which it is a required element just like any other invention.

So the "Gift Certificate" was perfectly proper giving Hank Rearden's creation of Rearden Metal and the process for making it to those who did not earn it because Rearden was only a mooching recipient of the government's gift of "monopoly backed by government guns". Obama would love it. Whoops, there goes your right to your house, too, your "monopoly" only being "backed by government guns". Your deed is now the "Gift Certificate".

These supposed rational arguments for calling patents government sponsored "monopolies" as opposed to government defended property rights apply equally (i.e., they don't) to your "exclusive use" of your home and your bank account.

It won't help if intellectual property rights are violated everywhere else, including here in what is left of this country.

The left has been spreading the notion that _all_ private property rights are "monopolies" in their attempt to obliterate the distinction between the rights of the individual and government force, and in particular the distinction between property ownership and government enforced monopoly as nothing but an appendage of government control on behalf of some "class". Not everyone who falls for this disinformation is a leftist -- their intent is to spread confusion and anti-individualist falsehoods everywhere, and so we hear it from all kinds of sources, including supporters of Ayn Rand.

"Land rights" "monopolies" were invented in feudalism, too. Locke, the Enlightenment, and the founding fathers did a lot better. The arithmetic of capitalism, by which you are referring to accounting, was used in merchantilism before capitalism. But it's arithmetic not philosophy, and it's true wherever it is used to calculate.

It's true that the Constitution is not the philosophical justification for the laws, but it was based on better ideas than those in Venice, feudualism and merchantilism.

Most of the effort in formulating the Constitution went into devising a political implementation with limits on growth of power, based on already accepted ideas of individualism.

("3/5 votes for slaves" was the politically feasible alternative to eliminating slavery at the time; that principle for computing representation in Washington -- not literally discounting votes for slaves -- served to limit the power of the slave states.)

But unlimited collectivist government, not limited government.

The statement was about "product of the mind".

And that is why some of us have given up speaking to him.

This is more of Maphesdus' repetitive ignorant rubbish. He doesn't have any understanding of Ayn Rand's philosophy, as he repeatedly illustrates over and over in his goofy pronouncements. Ayn Rand explained the logical basis of the necessity and her advocacy for a government properly delimited and how anarchy contradicts it. That was not "emotional denunciation". Her philosophy does not "logically lead straight to anarchy". In Maphesdus' manipulation of floating abstractions he doesn't know what logic is either.

"Galt's Gulch is the Official Atlas Shrugged Movie 'Collective.' Galt's Gulch is a community of like-minded individuals who come together regularly to share interesting content and ideas with each other and debate about politics, economics, philosophy and more. If you've read and have been influenced by Atlas Shrugged, this is the site you've been waiting for. This, is Galt's Gulch Online."

"Like-minded" does not mean your spreading any ideas you feel like in your religious hatred for Ayn Rand's philosophy.

What some "seem to believe" about anarchy and religion does not make them coherent positions, let alone compatible with their opposite in Ayn Rand's philosophy.

"Securing the exclusive right" is based, more fundamentally, on the rights of the _individual_, like all rights, not to "promote progress", but at least they got it in as a function to protect intellectual property rights.

Denial of intellectual property rights on principle is a form of anarchy in one sphere, not necessarily across the board, but the same a-philosophical "libertarian" mentality seems to often show up in both.