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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 11, 2012 13:13 UTC (Tue) by Wol (guest, #4433)In reply to: Study for US Congress outlines options against patent trolls (The H) by paulj Parent article: Study for US Congress outlines options against patent trolls (The H)
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,
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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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