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Study for US Congress outlines options against patent trolls (The H)Study for US Congress outlines options against patent trolls (The H)Posted Sep 7, 2012 20:43 UTC (Fri) by paulj (subscriber, #341)In reply to: Study for US Congress outlines options against patent trolls (The H) by Wol Parent article: Study for US Congress outlines options against patent trolls (The H)
Does that make instructions for how to build some machine maths?
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Study for US Congress outlines options against patent trolls (The H) Posted Sep 11, 2012 13:13 UTC (Tue) by Wol (guest, #4433) [Link]
What if it does? The *instructions* can be maths, they're protectable by copyright, so who cares?
The *machine* remains patentable by copyright.
This is exactly the confusion the "let's patent software" crowd are using to try and get software patents.
Cheers,
Study for US Congress outlines options against patent trolls (The H) Posted Sep 11, 2012 13:26 UTC (Tue) by paulj (subscriber, #341) [Link]
Not sure what you mean by "patentable by copyright". Given the previous sentence, I'm assuming "protectable by patents" is what you had intended there. In which case:
So then the instructions are not patentable (but copyrightable), while the instructions + a machine is patentable. And guess what, this is *exactly* how software patents work in many parts of Europe, the patent claims are made for the combination of some set of instructions and a machine (e.g. a general purpose computer).
Study for US Congress outlines options against patent trolls (The H) Posted Sep 12, 2012 23:22 UTC (Wed) by Wol (guest, #4433) [Link]
Which is why my original comment said "of course adding this big number to a general purpose machine does not make a new machine".
Following a list of instructions "with a machine" isn't patentable. Doesn't stop the patent offices issuing patents, though :-(
Cheers,
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