No it does not. A monopoly is a violation of peoples' right to contract and their property rights by the government, providing special access to a specific company to a market. Property rights can never be a monopoly.

The earliest computers were also wired. They also required a programmer to wire rows on these individual boards that would run steps in machine code on the hardware. Then these wired boards were plugged into these computers in the the order needed for a specific program to run. A different program to solve a different problem only needed a different set of wired boards.
This is the basis of today's computers and today's software.

There is no such thing. Truly novel means a unique combination of elements. Any other definition requires inventors to violate conservation of energy and matter. Non-Obviousness is the result of Judicial activism and is illogical. On its face it is impossible to have an invention that is new (novel) that was obvious when it was created. The non-obviousness requirement is arbitrary and should be withdrawn. Baring that we should return to the Federal Circuits formulation of the non-obviousness requirement.

db researches and purposely examines clients' space. Just like you would understand your marketplace, your patent attorney (s) perform the intellectual property due diligence. It is time consuming, but the resulting Opinion save time and lots of money. It is as important as any part of building your business. There are papers on point that objectively show startups which do the search and opinion work on inventions have better "exits." An exit situation might be a IPO (initial public offering) or sale.

Not anymore

Software is not a way of wiring an electronic circuit. The circuits in the computer are already "wired" (now "printed"). The software is a sequence of steps implementing decisions by algorithms that put the circuits into different electronic states as the steps are traversed. Some circuits are custom designed to implement specific software.

Indeed. When I "purchase" software the contract makes it quite clear that I am not purchasing the software, but a license to use it; that I may not copy or resell it or any part of it.

In s/w the concern most customers have is that you will sell the same code to their competitors. They also believe that if they paid for the development they should have the rights to the thing being developed. In s/w I see both sides have a point. Certainly, the person paying for the s/w needs to keep the copyright in the code if they are going to resell it.

I have also told developers to trade the amount they will charge for the amount of IP they are willing to give up.

No it is not. A sorting algorithm uses math, so does all of electrical engineering. That does not make circuits math. This is true of encryption routines, etc. Computer science at its heart is no more about math than any field of engineering.

Software is a way of wiring an electronic circuit - it is NOT MATH.

No I did not mistype that. Property rights are based on creation and that is what patents are based on. All property rights are about exclusive rights.

You do not understand what a monopoly is. 1st of all a patent does not even give you the right to make or sell your own invention, so it cannot be a monopoly. Property rights can never be a monopoly.

All property rights are government sponsored. You either have not thought about this or you are being intellectually dishonest.

I guess I don't know about the 99%, but given my limited experience with programming it seems like 75% of it is I/O stuff, which is very unlikely to be an invention.

1) The Sup Ct. has failed to define what they mean by an abstract idea. This means the standard is arbitrary and just an excuse to steal people's property rights.
2) No where did Alice say "do it with a computer", so this rhetoric is going to be used to invalidate (steal inventions) patents.
3) This is going to eliminate investment software companies that create financial products, further entrenching big banks and Wall Street.
4) The Court has revived the discredited and logically incorrect idea that you can look to each element of a claim and if they are all known then the patent can be invalidated. This violates conservation of energy and matter.
5) This is just the start of the problems this decision will create

I find this thinking outrageous. Where else does this happen?!?! One does not go to the car dealer and buy a car and then demand the blueprints or CAD files, or walk into KFC, buy a bucket of chicken and demand the secret recipe!

Understood. Actually, I have had to advise s/w consultants on something similar, where the customer wants all rights in the s/w. If the consultant does this too often then he will not be able to make anything. Usually, we can work out an agreement to not reuse the information for a competitor and let the customer have rights to non-repeatable techniques that apply to their industry.

I would argue that applied mathematics can absolutely apply under the same patent rules that you want to apply to software and for exactly the same reasons. A sorting algorithm is an invention I would certainly deem worthy of patent, and it is purely a mathematical concept applied to information as stored or retrieved from a database. RSA and elliptical cryptography techniques similarly employ mathematical computations to enable file encryption/decryption. Computer science at its very heart is the study of mathematics in its most base form. I would argue that the original invention of calculus would have qualified for patent protection - assuming patents existed in the 1600's and you could isolate whether Newton or Leibniz was the original "inventor".

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...

I think you mis-typed that.

Patents most certainly ARE monopolistic. When you obtain a patent, you are gaining exclusive rights to the use of a particular invention or process until the expiration of the patent, at which point it becomes general knowledge. In order for someone else to LEGALLY use your patent, they MUST obtain an agreement from you as to their use and/or resale of your ideas and those who do not have such an agreement are prosecuted in Federal court.

That sounds pretty much like the definition of a monopoly to me - and a government-sponsored one to boot.

Love your little ditty!

Those definitions I can work with and agree to. By that definition, many of the patents granted on UI aspects (including one-click, gestures on touchscreens, etc.) classify as instances of application rather than invention. And these constitute 99%+ of the software that gets written for industrial usage.

Where do you see the problems arising from the limitations now established by the Supreme Court? Please cite specific instances so that I can better follow you.

Hello Robbie53024,
As a fellow engineer you can appreciate the fact that some designs are not being designed for "manufacturability." Some new designers are enamored with the power of their CAD systems and are not engineers but are designing for pure aesthetics without regard for manufacture. Sometimes some of my customers get a job which I can produce a die/mold for, but they cannot cast with reasonable scrap rates. The parts are marginal as designed for metal flow and casting purposes. They can often be manufactured from billet, but they wish to save costs and try to cast the parts near net shape. If the foundry pays me to build a tool and then finds they cannot produce the casting as designed and the customer will not allow modifications, they occasionally refuse to pay and win in court. A judge will say that my customer did not produce what his customer ordered, end of story... the judge will not care how much effort and different methods my customer tried or how many suggestions of how to make the part more casting friendly, or that I will demand payment because my tooling was not at fault. My customer loses! The judge is ignorant of the process. Each time a new part is cast it is a unique challenge. It is a prototype so to speak the first time and it may not work. My customers are often willing to take on the challenges, the R&D, and will point out the limitations and the possibility that this may not work as designed, only to find out later of the inflexibility of the ultimate purchaser. This is when they lose all around. Some of the companies I serve are small outfits that only generate a few million in sales so an order of an hundred thousand that goes bad can ruin them and this is not an unusual sum. I have even seen when this occurs, that the judge will rule that the foundry must also pay legal fees for the winner who ultimately was a moocher.
Regards,
O.A.

Hello dbhalling,
I produce one offs. The tooling I produce is unique, it requires my ingenuity and creativity to produce. My customers go on using it long after I am paid, to produce wealth for themselves, while I receive no royalties. I produce mostly injection molds that may last indefinitely. I am not complaining, because I know what I am getting into in the first place. However sometimes my customers make unreasonable demands upon me and I will not comply. For instance; The other day a customer requested my die designs (CAD files) before proceeding with the build. He had already issued a P.O. and I have been a supplier for many years. This was new and quite disconcerting. I said I would not and he questioned why not? since he was paying for them... I told him to read my customer service policy which clearly states that my designs and data are proprietary and that he did not pay for my software or my designs that he has contracted for a tool and i was going to supply it and nothing more since this has been standard practice in this industry for longer than I can remember and I have in this business in some capacity for forty years. He was satisfied with some screen dumps, and I believe i will maintain their business, but I will not hand over CAD files. They are mine and they exist because of my investment and ingenuity. I could still be producing these dies with paper sketches, a pencil and a trig book of sine, cos, and tan, values. These files I keep are also sales tool and help me with die changes and engineering changes that make it more affordable for my customers to send dies I build back to me. additionally if I supplied the data up-front my customer could nit pick them to death and drive up the cost of the production, or cancel the order and use my files to have another mold-maker build from them.

Not Cool!

Regards,
O.A.

Hello khalling,
I am unqualified to judge on the merits, but it sure sounds like something from AS. Directive 10-289 ... "Point Three. All patents and copyrights, pertaining to any devices, inventions, formulas, processes and works of any nature whatsoever, shall be turned over to the nation as a patriotic emergency gift by means of Gift Certificates to be signed voluntarily by the owners of all such patents and copyrights. The Unification Board shall then license the use of such patents and copyrights to all applicants, equally and without discrimination, for the purpose of eliminating monopolistic practices, discarding obsolete products and making the best available to the whole nation. No trademarks, brand names or copyrighted titles shall be used. Every formerly patented product shall be known by a new name and sold by all manufacturers under the same name, such name to be selected by the Unification Board. All private trademarks and brand names are hereby abolished.It sounds as if the government is taking away patents that were previously held just like with Rearden. But, like I said, I am not qualified to judge so I will defer to the experts.
You may be interested in some further comments I shall write to db and to Robbie shortly.
Regards,
O.A.