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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 22:40 UTC (Fri) by yokem_55 (subscriber, #10498)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)
What about implementing an algorithm in a hardware, fixed function ASIC? Then what happens when you virtualize that ASIC? Where exactly is the line between patentable hardware and unpatentable math? I find software patents as repugnant as anyone else around here, but blindly equating software to unpatentable math oversimplifies the situation...
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Study for US Congress outlines options against patent trolls (The H) Posted Sep 7, 2012 23:07 UTC (Fri) by dlang (✭ supporter ✭, #313) [Link]
Math algorithms are not supposed to be patented.
what algorithms are you implementing in hardware? do they boil down to doing a series of calculations? (which they will for digital logic). If so the ASIC should not be able to be patented.
you could copyright it, but there had better be some creativity in what you do, not just mechanical layout based on high-level description (although any non-trivial high-level description can be copyrighted)
It doesn't matter if the implemenation is in circuits or in software.
just like combining words into a book is copyrightable, but not patentable.
If you create a new type of chip feature (i.e. a flash memory cell, phase change memory cell, new type of transister, gate, etc), that feature is patentable, but not the functionality of the ASIC or the algorithm that it implements.
ASIC simulation and patents Posted Sep 19, 2012 0:48 UTC (Wed) by Max.Hyre (subscriber, #1054) [Link] I think the HW engineer is (or should be) simply out of luck on that one. I offered elsewhere a way to distinguish SW for purposes of excluding it from patent system, and mentioned that exact case. Simplifying, I think if the object under discussion (not instructions for it, but the object itself) can be sent over a data link, it shouldn't be patentable.
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